NORM waste management: impact on résidents surrounding a landfill
Résumé
French regulators have taken advantage of the transposition of the European directive 2013/59/Euratom to update the regulation on the management of waste from industries involving NORM. The activity concentrations of waste containing NORM are highly variable depending on the raw materials used in the industrial processes and on the processes themselves, from a few Bq/kg to several thousand Bq/kg of uranium 238, thorium 232 and/or their daughters, as well as potassium 40.
One of the evolutions is that NORM waste whose activity concentrations is lower than 20,000 Bq/kg of uranium 238 and/or thorium 232 may be stored in a landfill for usual dangerous substances, and not necessarily in a radioactive waste storage facility.
The impact on residents living in the vicinity of such landfill may be assessed on the basis of various scenarios. These scenarios must cover the operating phase of the landfill and the post-closure phase. For each phase, both normal operations and accidental situations should be assessed.
The aim of this presentation is to describe these scenarios and the associated hypotheses:
•the type of waste (pasty or powdery, rich in uranium 238 or rich in thorium 232 or in potassium 40),
•the exposure parameters to calculate external and internal exposure (distances between the radiation source and the residents, suspension factors, inhalation rates, exposure times, food consumption rates, etc.).
On the basis of the results that will be presented, some recommendations may be made to the authorities and to the operator of the landfill for the protection of the public).
Domaines
Sciences de l'environnement
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