The U.S. Department of Energy's mixed waste and landfill stabilization focus areas joined forces again to sponsor their second review in less than three months. On November 12-15, 1995, MWFA and LSFA convened a review panel in Dallas to evaluate thermal treatments; then on January 25, 1996, the two focus areas and the characterization, monitoring, and sensor technology crosscutting area collaborated on an independent assessment of non-destructive assay and non-destructive examination technologies. These technologies remotely characterize the contents of containers without opening them and, therefore, avoid the high cost and risk of manual evaluation of transuranic waste drums.
An external review panel heard presentations on eight non-invasive technologies currently being funded by DOE's Office of Science and Technology. These technologies represent a variety of methods for identifying low-level and transuranic waste that is being stored in drums and boxes throughout the DOE complex. Approximately one million drums await characterization before DOE can either treat them or determine they are candidates for permanent storage at the yet-to-be-established Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The critical factor in these drums' disposition is their level of radioactivity. Technologies that can accurately distinguish low-level waste (below 100 nCi/g) from transuranic waste will save DOE from treating all stored waste as transuranic.
The eight projects examined by the review panel were: drum-inspecting robots, passive and active gamma ray, x-ray, and neutron analysis of drum contents, data fusion, and neural networks. The panel determined the relative strengths and weaknesses of the technologies, identified redundancies and possible system integrations, classified the technologies according to stage of development, and prioritized the technologies based on their maturity and their meeting of program needs.
The review panel made the following recommendations.
