Profiling of Tritium Contaminated Concrete.
Rather than remotely operated demolition of the entombment under tightly controlled, contained, and monitored conditions, much less restrictive demolition became feasible. This resulted in a cost saving of approximately $550,000 and time saving of approximately 4 months in schedule.
40+
Sample Number
5
Project Duration Days
$550,000
Cost Savings
Service & Process Highlights of Mound Plant Sw-17 & Sw-19 Old Cave Facility Advanced Subsurface Sampling & Characterization
NMNTI satisfied CH2M HILL of Ohio Inc with a pioneering approach to The Advanced Sampling and Analysis of Tritium Facilities, SW-13/1B Building and Old Cave facility at Mound Plant using TRUPRO® a patented process. The objective of the Mound Tritium Facilities Project was to deploy a concrete sampling and profiling tool developed. This sampling and profiling technology was deployed by NMNT for the U.S. Department of Energy Mound Environmental Management Project (DOE-MEMP) Office and BWXT of Ohio Inc.
The subsurface profiling technology penetrated many locations and layers of materials to depths of nine feet obtaining 97 separate samples including powdered concrete and metal fine shaving samples from the Old Cave facility structures. Sampling was in the vertical direction downward into the floors and subsurface building structures to acquire representative samples of buried subsurface metal objects including cave shielding doors, end shield plates, crane rails, portions-sections of the cave structure, cave structure concrete footer base and subsurface bedrocks and soils.
A summation of radionuclide activity was performed by extrapolating concentrations over all Old Cave entombment structural materials. This resulted in a significant (150-fold) reduction to previously estimated radionuclide inventory. A similar reduction in radiological hazard was therefore anticipated for the removal of the Old Cave entombment during demolition of the Miamisburg Closure Project's SW Building. Rather than remotely operated demolition of the entombment under tightly controlled, contained, and monitored conditions, much less restrictive demolition became feasible. This resulted in a cost saving of approximately $550,000 and time saving of approximately 4 months in schedule.
The biggest advantage of pursuing this sampling approach was the improved approach to sample acquisition and thus be able to penetrate to greater depths through varied layering of different materials of diverse physical characteristics and obtain samples to quantify the contents of Pandora’s Box prior to facility demolition. The no sampling or characterization approach would have meant accessing the contamination area, inherently causing delays in building material removal as anomalies of activity levels at the various critical locations of the historical process structure were unearthed so increasing project turn-around time, and radiological risk. The downtime associated with these delays reduces productivity, increases costs, and most importantly, delays worker awareness of the area.