I'm hoping someone can help me out with this. I work at Hanford, part of the transuranic waste retrieval that was buried on site. We started out in a trench with relatively perfect 55 gallon drums, and burial boxes. Basically we dig up these old trenches, survey the drums, check the integrity, then transport them a short distance to our process area...all outside. The problem is, the older the drums, the worse the integrity is getting on these things (obviously) We recently ran into some contamination and posted a few modules CA. It was then discussed and debated throughout the radcon world as to how we are going to handle these things, given our conditions (weather) It was decided that when performing work in these CA's, radcon would post an exclusion area 30 feet away from the CA boundary and run airsampling in a 360 degree circumference. Some number puncher came up with this 30 foot exclusion distance, given wind speeds that don't exceed 11 mph. I don't believe this is sufficient. The other day absorbent was being dumped into a burial box that was being loaded with bagged up drums, which had accumulated moisture inside the bags. In the event they leaked for any reason, the absorbent would isolate the problem, bear in mind these boxes are then sealed, and later re-opened inside a greenhouse. While these guys were dumping this "kitty litter" into the box it created a talcum powdery dust. As I watched, this dust passed completely beyond our exclusion area, and up to 30-40 ft past it. The problem I have, is that I don't believe contamination is less likely to do the same thing. I was wondering if anyone works in a similar environment, and if you do, is there an equation to plug in suspension factors with any given wind speed. Example: Something that tells me, in 5 mph Pu239 will travel "X" ft over terrain......It would help me immensely, and would be greatly appreciated with any input on this.
Thanks!
