Improving the Cradle-to-Grave Control of Sealed Radioactive Sources: An Interregional Approach

The Mediterranean region is characterized by an intense maritime trade to enable the movement of persons and goods among seaside countries and from them to other countries of Europe, Asia and Africa. Associated to this intense traffic, some occurrences have been reported at borders and inland of trade accidentally involving radioactive sources or contaminated materials which needed to be properly addressed upon positive detection. In some cases, orphan radioactive sources have reached industrial processes resulting in inadvertent release of considerable amount of radioactivity to the environment. For the last years, the IAEA has been working on strengthening the control over radioactive sources to avoid these occurrences and to protect the public from the hazards of ionizing radiation. Some of the efforts are channeled through the IAEA technical cooperation programme, with the objective of providing assistance to face this challenge. As part of its efforts to address this problem, the IAEA has developed and is implementing the interregional project INT9176, titled “Strengthening Cradle-to-Grave Control of Radioactive Sources in the Mediterranean Region”. The primary objective of the project is to contribute “to ensure an adequate and permanent control over radioactive sources at state level, benefiting from the use of a harmonized regional approach consistent with IAEA safety standards and other international best practices.” The project has been operating since 2012 with a four-year approved lifetime and is funded by the IAEA Technical Cooperation Fund with important extra-budgetary contributions from the European Union, the United States and Spain. To date numerous activities have been implemented, including activities regarding the update of the regulatory framework, the waste management infrastructure and the inventories of radioactive sources in each participating country. National policies and strategies for radioactive waste management were developed or updated. Conditioning, packaging, storage and disposal of disused radioactive sources and the development of new technology aimed at merging the Mobile Hot Cell and the Borehole Disposal Concept are also activities considered within the project.