NORM waste management: impact on landfill workers

Helene Caplin (1)

1 IRSN/PSE-ENV/SEREN/BERAP - Bureau d'expertise en radioprotection de la population

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 workers of such a decision may be assessed on the basis of workplaces studies. To this end, it is necessary to identify the different workplaces concerning by exposure to NORM waste in the landfill. For each identified workplace, the assessor has to define exposure scenario(s) including degraded operating situations and the associated hypotheses as: •the type of waste (pasty or powdery, rich in uranium 238 or rich in thorium 232 or in potassium 40), •the exposure parameters to assess external and internal exposure (such as distance between the radiation source and the workers, the suspension rate, inhalation rate, etc.). The aim of this presentation is to describe these scenarios and the associated hypotheses On the basis of the results, some recommendations may be made to the authorities (for inspection) and to the operator of the landfill (for workers protection).

Domaines: Sciences de l'environnement

Helene Caplin. NORM waste management: impact on landfill workers. International Congress of the International Radiation Protection Association 15, IRPA, Jan 2021, SÉOUL, North Korea. ⟨hal-03164344⟩