MARSSIM Discussion Group

[mwbarsa]

Hi,

Does anyone know if MARSSIM has any specific guidance on renovated interior building surfaces? Case in point... a building stored radioactive materials at one point in time long ago, the material was removed not quite as long ago, and then the building was completely gutted and renovated fairly recently. Obviously FSS should have been done after the material was taken out, but let's say that either that slipped through the cracks or record of it was lost before the facility wanted to terminate its license. Could that building be treated as non-impacted or would it be necessary to chop up tiles/put holes in walls trying to find original surfaces?

Thanks!!!!

[mwbarsa]

Thanks for the reply!

I guess to clarify a bit more - for all intents and purposes, license termination would occur fairly soon (actually, although that is the ultimate goal, the intermediate goal is just to have the building removed the license, and this action would be happening much sooner than full-blown termination)

I know this is probably a gray area, but does any guidance, MARSSIM or otherwise, address issues such as building renovations, inaccessible survey location points, etc.? Oftentimes I've found that it's difficult to real-time field conditions with MARSSIM guidance

[mwbarsa]

That's the main gray area - institutional knowledge of the site would dictate that a free release survey did indeed occur at the time materials usage ceased (prior to renovation); however, at some point in time, the record of the survey was lost - so there is a very high certainty that no residual contamination would be present, but just no paper saying so

[retread]

Thanks Marssim!  I'm looking at it as I type.

[Chimera]

Thanks for the reply!

I know this is probably a gray area, but does any guidance, MARSSIM or otherwise, address issues such as building renovations, inaccessible survey location points, etc.? Oftentimes I've found that it's difficult to real-time field conditions with MARSSIM guidance

Now that I'm dealing with MARSSIM and MARSAME, I've been a little surprised to see just what it does - and more importantly, doesn't - say about this whole dispositional survey topic.  In a nutshell, both seem to say that you have to have a survey plan for final disposition of whatever you're planning to get rid of.  While they offer some basic guidance as to how those surveys should be conducted, that seems to be what the documents cover.  It's been my limited experience that most "survey plans" seem to consist of telling the Techs to do a survey while relying on the Techs' judgement when performing the survey.  While I may furnish my Techs with additional information - if I know it ahead of time - I have yet to see any type of "survey plan" before the fact.  Yes, we work in accordance with our site procedures as well as the Federal regulations.  However, I've already seen "real life" catch us off guard way too many times.  Changing where the materials are to be dispositioned long after they've been removed from the buidling and are already packaged has caused a lot of extra work, too.

I guess, based on what I've heard over the years and read here, I was expecting a more rigorous document than what I've found.  It all still seems to fall on the shoulders of the Techs in the field to attempt to anticipate what's going on than any sort of direction prior to the work being started.