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European Laboratory for Particle Physics |
Ralph,
I appreciate that you confirm my suspicion and answer my rhetoric and
ironic question on ICRP positively. So even in the early days ICRP's wise
men were not always so rational in their statements than at least I was made
to believe when I started in the radiation field in 1961. Since then the
number of "oblique" formulations in ICRP documents has become legion and I
consider as a miracle that there is in large still global exception of
their Recommendations while even in the field of religion we are left with
four major and many minor choices. With respect to ICRP fundamentals there
have already been many heretic statements but a religious war with all its
ugly consequences has so far been avoided.
Dear colleagues,
in recent years the topic of radioactive material from accelerators that is
no longer to be used (you notice that I hesitate to use the words
radioactive waste) has become an important issue at CERN. The obvious reason
is that we have run out of space particularly since we were forced due to
political reasons to store all scrap even of very low specific activity
under the roof. When, however, we tried to get rid of the material as
inactive we met insurmountable difficulties. When
we then tried to hand over to the official Agency in France material with
some higher specific activity as normal radioactive waste we encountered
an unexpected opposition. Both attitudes are to a great deal born out of two
adverse opinions. On the one hand radioactive material from accelerators is
readily assimilated to waste from nuclear power plants, on the other hand
there is fear that there may be unknown and therefore dangerous
radionuclides formed by spallation present in accelerator waste.
It is my firm opinion that the two categories of radioactive waste should not be placed into the same basket. High-energy accelerators produce radioactivity that, with only some rare exceptions, consists of beta-gamma emitting materials of metallic nature where the radiologically important radionuclide with the longest half life is Co60. There is usually no contamination risk. In view of in many cases low specific activities involved these valuable materials should be recycled rather than being thrown to the waste (this explains my hesitation above). At this place I would like to give again great credits to Jan Tuyn of my group who in collaboration with his many students, fellows and visitors has created a wealth of knowledge in the field of accelerator activated material.
With all the more political difficulties CERN has encountered in the field so far, I brought, during my recent visit to the IAEA in Vienna, the topic to the attention to Dr. Abel Gonzales, Director of Nuclear Safety, Radiation and Waste. He agreed that the matter of activated material in accelerators deserves special attention and asked me to exploit the possibility for an IAEA TECDOC on the subject. I agreed to write a preliminary draft but suggested to create a small working panel composed out of one colleague from Japan (KEK), Russia (Dubna or IHEP) and the US (Brookhaven, Fermilab or SLAC) with some experience in the field of radioactive material and willing to collaborate on the subject. It is clear that we must consider smaller accelerators too but the bulk of radioactivity is found in our big machines to be decommissioned one day.
Ladies and gentlemen, I therefore ask you to manifest your interest and to send me an e-mail such that I can send you the draft material when it is ready.
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