Safe Management of Spent Sealed Radiation Sources and Radioactive Waste in Bangladesh

Bangladesh is committed to the peaceful use of atomic energy and has signed all protocols and additional protocol of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in this regards. Bangladesh is operating nuclear facilities using radioisotopes, sealed radioactive sources (SRS) and generating radioactive wastes including spent SRS. This paper mainly focuses on the safe management of spent SRS generated from various applications in medicine and industry. The main research facility is situated at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE), Savar located 45 km south-west of the capital city Dhaka, where a 3MW TRIGA Mark-II Research Reactor, Radioisotope Production Laboratories, a 14 MeV neutron generator and an 18,500 TBq Co irradiator form the core of the peaceful nuclear activities. There are 17 nuclear medicine centers/departments, 10 industrial radiotherapy facilities, 2 gamma irradiator facilities, one linear accelerator, one Van de Graff generator, 3 high dose radiation (HDR) and 2 low dose radiation (LDR) brachytherapy units in the country. These are used for a variety of purposes in research, medicine, industry and other fields. All these activities give rise to significant amount of liquid, solid and mixed radioactive wastes including SRS. Proper management of spent SRS requires an established radioactive waste management infrastructure and in particular, a facility designed for the specific purpose of conditioning and subsequently interim storage of spent sealed sources. Such a facility did not exist in our country for a long time, especially for those where radionuclide are used in hospital’s or research institutes. Recently a semi-pilot-scale centralized radioactive waste processing and storage facility (CWPSF) has been established at AERE. In establishing the facility IAEA Ref. design recommended for developing countries [1], has been followed. This facility has been established through a joint effort of the country's annual development program (ADP) and the IAEA TC Project (BGD/4/022). This facility is now being utilized for safe collection, handling of low-and intermediate-level solid and liquid radioactive wastes, safe interim-storage of the wastes (non-conditioned and conditioned), sorting/segregation of solid wastes, processing (pre-treatment, treatment, conditioning) and interim-storage of the conditioned wastes. The facility comprises several machines/equipments such as Sorting box, In-drum cement mixer, Compactor, IonExchange-cum-ultra filtration unit etc. This facility is intended to serve as a semi-pilot scale infra-structure for safe pre-disposal management of RWs including SRS, that are arising and expected to be generated in the future from the nuclear applications in the country.