Kim Lukes
Health Physicist
Office of Federal and State Materials and Environmental Management Programs
Occasionally
the Department of Energy makes news when it picks up radioactive
materials from users who no longer want them. DOE plays an important
role when it secures these sources pending final disposal — often
prompting headlines about keeping “
dirty bomb” materials away from bad guys.
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These headlines overlook the many layers of protection that keep radioactive materials secure every day. The NRC and
Agreement State
co-regulators require licensees with materials that could pose the
biggest hazard to store them securely. When no longer needed, they can
be securely stored on site, safely moved to a commercial disposal site
or turned over to the federal government for disposal. The NRC and
Agreement State regulators inspect licensees periodically to make sure
they are meeting the requirements. These requirements provide adequate
protection against theft or misuse of radioactive materials in the U.S.
Earlier this month the
National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA),
an arm of DOE, picked up a source that was no longer needed for medical
research at Temple University in Pennsylvania. By law, DOE is
responsible for disposing of this type of waste, although DOE does not
yet have an approved disposal site or method. The department will store
the source — in this case, an old irradiator containing cesium-137 —
until a disposal site is available.
Before
NNSA picked up the source, it was protected as all risk-significant
radioactive sources are. (These materials are also known as
International Atomic Energy Agency
Category 1 and Category 2 quantity of sources).
The NRC and its Agreement State partners put measures in place after
Sept. 11, 2001, to protect high-risk radioactive materials against
theft. Today, these measures protect more than 75,000 sources used in
medical, commercial and research activities. The NRC just updated and
expanded these security requirements, adding them to a new section of
our regulations —
10 CFR Part 37.
The security requirements include:
• Background checks and fingerprinting to ensure that people with access to radioactive materials are trustworthy and reliable;
• Controls on who can access areas where radioactive materials are stored or used;
• Security plans and procedures to monitor, detect, assess and respond to unauthorized access attempts;
• Coordination and response planning between licensees and local law enforcement;
• Coordination and tracking of radioactive materials shipments; and
• Security barriers to discourage theft of portable devices.
Besides
its Offsite Source Recovery Project, NNSA has a Global Threat Reduction
Initiative to help improve the security of nuclear and radioactive
materials internationally. NNSA also provides voluntary security
enhancements domestically. Licensees who meet NRC or Agreement State
security requirements can chose to work with NNSA to put additional
security enhancements in place. The NRC cooperates with NNSA on this
voluntary program. Security of these materials is a top priority for the
NRC. We continue to assess and improve our security requirements as
needed.
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