Abstract
The DOE manages an inventory of materials that contains a range of long-lived radioactive isotopes that were produced from the 1960s through the 1980s. These materials were made by irradiating targets in production reactors to produce special heavy isotopes for DOE programmatic use, scientific research, and industrial and medical applications. ORNL uses these materials in DOE’s center for production, storage, and distribution of transuranium isotopes (plutonium through californium) for the heavy-element research program and has used them as feedstock in the Calutron Electromagnetic Isotope Enrichment Facility, one of only two facilities in the world with capabilities to enrich radioisotopes in multigram quantities. Both the production reactors and enrichment facilities have been shut down, and many of these unique materials will not be produced again in the foreseeable future [1, 2]. As a result, ORNL has an inventory of radioisotopes that are being held for reuse because their potential intrinsic value to DOE, but many of these materials have no currently defined use. ORNL is undertaking an initiative to more actively manage these materials by reviewing the existing inventory to determine if the contents have programmatic use. Steps are being taken to process, repackage, and stage the materials for distribution to programmatic users or for waste disposal, primarily at WIPP. This paper describes the approach that ORNL has taken to determine whether the inventory of materials should be kept or disposed and the processes that are being used to manage or disposition the materials.
