GLOBAL THREAT REDUCTION SOURCE RECOVERY EFFORTS IN LATIN AMERICA

The Global Threat Reduction Initiative’s Off-Site Source Recovery Project (OSRP), which is administered by the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), removes excess, unwanted, abandoned, or orphan radioactive sealed sources that pose a potential risk to health, safety, and national security. This program has traditionally addressed domestic threat reduction efforts within the United States, where more than 17,500 excess and unwanted sealed sources have been recovered. As the GTRI program matured since May 2004, however, GTRI and OSRP staff realized that little was being done to address the problem of disused and unwanted U.S.-origin radioactive sealed sources internationally. This paper provides a synopsis of cooperative efforts in Latin America to remove sealed sources by discussing four topical areas: 1) bilateral initiatives with Ecuador and Chile; 2) the Latin American Regional Partnership with the International Atomic Energy Agency; 3) challenges in repatriating sealed sources; and 4) future cooperation.