Jean-Claude Amiard

Management of Radioactive Waste


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      1.3.3.3. Hospital radioactive waste

      With respect to hospital radioactive effluents, French legislation is very strict and requires the intervention of official institutions, in particular ANDRA, for the conditioning, elimination, transport and storage of this waste [FRE 01, ACR 12]. This statement must be moderated, however, in view of the increase in practices involving radionuclides. The next radionuclides to be used will be beta and especially alpha emitters, which have a limited range in living matter. Recently, research is therefore exploring a number of products under development using isotopes such as lutetium-177, promethium-149, bismuth-212, bismuth-213, astatine-211, radium-223 and polonium-210.

      1.3.3.4. Harmfulness of radioactive waste

      For France, the IRSN [IRS 18b] proposes a methodology and possible criteria for assessing the harmfulness of radioactive materials and waste. In order to make the indicators understandable to a wide audience, the situations are defined to respect a minimum degree of realism. Their choice also aims to cover the main exposure routes and a diversity of contexts.

      Four situations are considered, the first two of which involve the presence of an individual in a room containing a package of radioactive waste or radioactive material, whether intact or damaged. The last two situations concern the dispersion of the package in the environment and the impact on an entire local human population or the impact on an aquatic ecosystem.

      1.3.4. American classification

Radionuclide Class A Class B Class C
3H 40 MC MC
14C 0.8 8
60Co 700 MC MC
90Sr 0.04 150 7,000
99Tc 0.3 3
129I 0.008 0.08
137Cs 1 44 4,600
All radionuclides with half-life <5 years 700 MC MC
α emitters with a half-life >5 years 10 100
241Pu 350 3,500
242Cm 2,000 20,000

      1.3.5. British classification

Waste classes Characteristics of this class
VLLW, small volume Waste of 0.1 m3 that can be disposed of with regular garbage if it contains less than 400 kBq of activity, as well as hospital and university waste. For waste containing carbon-14 and tritium, the activity limit is 4,000 kBq
VLLW, large volume Radioactive waste with an upper limit of 4 MBq per ton (not including tritium) is disposed of in specified landfills. For waste containing tritium, the upper limit is 40 MBq per ton
LLW Containing radioactive material other than that suitable for disposal with ordinary waste, but not exceeding 4 GBq per ton of waste or 12 GBq per ton of β and γ activity
ILW Waste with radioactivity levels above the upper limits for LLW, but which does not generate heat
HLW Wastes in which the temperature can increase significantly due to their radioactivity, so this factor must be taken into account in the design of storage or disposal facilities

      1.3.6. Russian classification

Category Specific activity (Bq.g-1)
Tritium Beta (except 3H) Alpha (except transuranium elements) Transuranium elements
Low activity 106–107 <103 <102 <10