Year
2015
Abstract
The Offsite Source Recovery Project (OSRP), sponsored by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Global Material Security (NA21), has been mandated to recover and dispose of orphaned, excess, or unwanted radioactive sealed sources located within the United States. This includes sealed sources containing transuranic and byproduct isotopes. Where the majority of transuranic sealed sources typically can be transported using Type A Containers, sealed sources containing byproduct isotopes (Cs137, Co60, Sr90, etc...), exceeding the A1/A2 shipping limit, tend to be much more logistically complicated and costly due to the required use of NRC/DOE certified Type B containers. Adding to the complexity is the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (USNRC) 2004 adoption of the International Atomic Energy Administration’s “Regulations for the Safe Transport of Radioactive Material” (TSR 1) (currently Safety Standards Series SSR6) standards for Type B(U) containers, which made older Type B containers obsolete and required all Type B(U) containers to meet TSR 1 (SSR6) standards. This resulted in a decrease in the availability of containers, and a dramatic increase in their rental cost. Despite these changes, several private companies have developed new Type B containers that are currently in use or will be in the near future. Over the past 10 years, OSRP has recovered over 1,750 disused and unwanted high activity byproduct sealed sources totaling 923,000 Ci of material using private and Department of Energy (DOE) owned Type B containers; however, the Type B container expense remains a great burden on the licensee who, typically budgeting for initial procurement and licensure costs, does not anticipate recycle/disposal costs of sealed sources requiring Type B shipment. Therefore, to help alleviate these costs, NNSA/OSRP have been developing two separate Type B shipping containers to be certified by the USNRC for use domestically and internationally. Once certified, the design will be made public to help alleviate initial cost of Type B development. One such NNSA/OSRP container has been already received its Certificate of Compliance (COC) by the USNRC and the second is in design phase and is anticipated to receive its COC in 2016.