Radioactivity Revisited—Keeping the Scrap Stream Clean

November/December 1999 

By Robert L. Reid

Robert L. Reid is managing editor of Scrap. 

The dangers of radiation have been all over the news lately—from employees wiping a radioactive “green salt” off the lunch tables at the now-notorious gaseous diffusion plant in Paducah, Ky., to the blue flash of light that signaled disaster at a uranium processing facility in Japan.

But grabbing far fewer headlines has been a series of recent efforts—involving institutions from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to the United Nations (UN)—to keep better track of radioactive material and prevent such “hot” metal from entering the scrap stream.

These efforts aren’t always flowing in the same direction. For instance, new regulations are either on the books or in the works to both monitor the location of potential sources of radioactive contamination and gather up any such sources that fell through the cracks. But at the same time, some of the same groups are reviewing ways to put formerly or even still-somewhat-contaminated metal out for commercial use—which makes steelmakers nervous and environmental activists angry (see “Fighting Over ‘Free Release’” on page 44).

And almost inevitably, any problem with radioactive sources becomes a problem for the scrap industry. As Mike Mattia, ISRI’s director of risk management, notes, “Radioactive material almost always has a metallic component—it’s housed in a metal canister.” That metal component will lead the owner to take the source to a scrap facility “to get some money for the metal—and so it gets into the recycling stream,” Mattia says.

Here’s a review of what steps are being taken to keep such radioactive sources from entering the scrap stream in the first place.

A General Problem

For scrap processors, two of the most dramatic developments involve a new final rule and a new proposed rule from NRC aimed at one of the most numerous and problematic sources of potential radioactive contamination—generally licensed devices, also known as general sources. These devices include measuring or controlling instruments such as gauges that contain radioactive material sealed in a protective shield. (There are also specifically licensed devices, which encompass the most powerful and potentially dangerous radioactive material and which are, hence, more heavily regulated by NRC.)

Under the new final rule, which took effect Oct. 4, NRC intends to establish an annual registration program for general licensees with devices that contain certain quantities of specific radionuclides—devices predominantly used to measure thickness, density, or chemical composition in petrochemical and steelmaking applications. Though the registration doesn’t apply to all general sources—there are more than half a million in use—NRC stresses that it will cover “those devices that present a higher risk” of potential exposure.

(NRC itself, however, will only contact an estimated 5,100 general licensees for registration. The rest are covered under the agreement-state system, which transfers NRC jurisdiction to roughly 30 approved state-run programs that will be expected “to achieve a compatible level of accountability over generally licensed devices,” NRC notes.)

The registration program will explicitly require covered general licensees to verify and certify the following information about their generally licensed devices:

• each device’s identification, such as manufacturer, model, and serial number;
  

• the person at the company who is knowledgeable about the devices and the applicable regulations; and
  

• the disposition and location of each device.
  

In addition, a separate and more comprehensive proposed rule, issued in July, included an annual $420 fee for each location (excluding multiple buildings at the same address) where a general licensee possesses one or more devices. The rule also:

• stressed that each licensee must designate a specific individual with the knowledge and authority to ensure regulatory compliance;
  

• clarified the reporting requirements regarding transfers, name changes, and damages or failures;
  

• established a requirement for some form of permanent labeling such as embossing, etching, stamping, or engraving; and
  

• limited the time a device can be left unused in storage to two years.
  

Moreover, NRC is considering tougher penalties for general licensees who lose or improperly dispose of their devices—a three-tiered system of $5,500, $15,000, or $45,000 in base civil penalties (up from a previous high of roughly $2,500), based on the relative costs of proper disposal. NRC is also looking at establishing a national computer database containing information on the identity of all generally licensed devices.

Honor System Falls Short

The person or company holding a general license has always been required to follow certain rules for labeling, transferring, and disposing of such devices, according to NRC. Certain general sources also needed to be tested for leaks and inspected periodically. But the agency has never been as strict about monitoring general sources as it has specific sources “because of the relatively small radiation exposure risk posed by these [general] devices and the very large number of general licensees.”

Instead, NRC relied on what was essentially an honor system to track and account for general devices, notes Mattia. But over time it became clear that the honor system wasn’t working. “A company changes hands, somebody forgets there’s a radioactive source in the machinery, the company goes bankrupt, and then a demolition contractor comes in to tear the place apart,” he explains.

And if the resulting scrap metal—with a hidden radioactive source inside—ends up being melted in a steel mill, “considerable contamination of the mill, the steel product, and the wastes from the slag and the baghouse dust can result,” NRC says.

How big of a threat is it? In the mid-1980s, NRC conducted a survey of general licensees with large-scale gauges. The survey, which “clearly established that there is a compliance problem,” found:

• some 16 percent of general licensees surveyed couldn’t account for all their gauges;
  

• a majority either didn’t notify NRC when gauges were transferred or else improperly transferred their gauges;
  

• at least 25 percent didn’t perform required leak tests or maintain leak-test records, and didn’t properly inspect the gauges’ on/off shielding mechanisms; and
  

• gauges were being improperly discarded—in landfills and even in an abandoned paper mill.
  

Concluding that it needed to require greater accountability regarding general sources, NRC proposed a rule in December 1991 that included a national registry of generally licensed devices. The proposed rule was never adopted, however, because NRC says it didn’t have the resources to implement the plan.

Continued efforts by ReMA and other interested groups such as the Steel Manufacturers Association (SMA) and the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) (both in Washington, D.C.) helped convince NRC in 1995 to establish a working group on generally licensed devices that included both NRC and agreement-state regulators and ultimately led to the current final rule and proposed rule.

In March 1999, NRC also implemented an interim enforcement policy for the new rules that included a temporary “amnesty” for violations if the general licensees themselves discover and report the violations and take corrective action. The amnesty is an unusual policy, NRC concedes, but one designed to encourage proactive behavior by licensees and dispel any reluctance by them to find and fix problems.

Overall, NRC’s final and proposed rules have drawn praise from industry groups. Still, Mattia stresses, while NRC has started moving in the right direction, “we’re not out of the woods yet. They’ve agreed to take some useful steps, but they haven’t done them yet.” And he wants to make sure NRC understands the potential disasters posed by radioactive material entering the scrap stream. 

Noting that the current system “has shifted the costs of lax accountability and control onto steelmakers, insurers, and taxpayers,” SMA’s President Thomas Danjczek praised the proposed annual fee for licensees. But he also argued in comments submitted to NRC that new licensees should be required to register with NRC before receiving their sources and that in addition to designating one person who will be responsible for compliance, licensees should be required to have a backup person available. (NRC is considering that requirement.) Moreover, a provision requiring licensees to notify NRC of bankruptcy should apply to all general licensees, Danjczek said, rather than just those subject to the registration.

Peter Hernandez, AISI’s vice president for employee relations, noted that determining “why” a general source can’t be accounted for is just as important as identifying that it can’t be found. An active role by NRC “in comparing the annual inventories and transfer reports and in resolving any discrepancies is a critical component of an effective oversight and accountability program,” Hernandez stressed in submitted comments.

No-Fault Orphans

NRC, together with EPA and the Department of Energy (DOE), has also begun action on another vital radiation-related problem—“orphan” sources, which are those that are discarded without enough identifying marks to trace the devices to their original licensees.

Currently, if an orphan device ends up at a scrap processing facility or steel mill, the business “must bear the burden of substantial costs for managing and disposing” of it, noted Hernandez in his comments. This then creates “a disincentive for nonlicensees to screen for radioactive devices and an incentive for them to pass the devices on to others,” he argued.

But to date, federal and state officials have been less-than-helpful to those who have found orphan sources at their facilities. “Very often one agency will point to another, that agency will point to a third, and the third will direct the individual [who discovered the orphan source] back to the original agency contacted,” Mattia noted in testimony before NRC.

With little government funding available to dispose of orphan sources and no imminent threat to the public so long as the shielding around the source’s radioactive material is intact, state and federal regulators have tended to leave these orphan devices in the hands of those who find them. But other groups counter that the danger to employees and the general public lies in requiring a company that’s not licensed to possess radioactive material to retain custody of such orphaned devices.

Last year, however, EPA began funding an initiative with the Conference of Radiation Control Program Directors (CRCPD) (Frankfort, Ky.), which represents state radiation safety officials, to develop a national monitoring system for orphan sources. Coordinated by CRCPD’s E-34 committee on unwanted radioactive materials, the initiative involves determining the number and kinds of sources awaiting disposal, and developing a risk-based ranking system to determine which sources to dispose of first, EPA notes on its Web site.

CRCPD will then use its inventory of orphaned sources together with the ranking system to develop procedures to assist states with orphan source disposal, EPA continues. “If possible, sources will be returned to the manufacturer for recycling,” the agency says. “CRCPD will also attempt to match sources with persons or organizations wishing to acquire a source for legitimate use. Such reuse reduces the number of sources requiring burial. If no reuse is possible and the source presents a hazard, CRCPD will work to secure disposal in an appropriate facility, usually a licensed low-level waste landfill.”

EPA and CRCPD also plan to eventually include scrap metal recycling companies in the program, working to inform the scrap industry about how “to effectively detect, identify, and handle sources that turn up at their facilities; and help them identify the proper regulatory agency to contact for disposal of orphaned sources in their possession,” EPA notes.

Earlier this year, NRC also launched a new effort by signing a memorandum of understanding with DOE to clarify each agency’s roles and responsibilities regarding orphan sources and establish methods for NRC to request DOE’s assistance with certain orphan source situations.

At the same time, NRC began considering whether to help fund CRCPD’s efforts, though a decision on funding isn’t expected until next year.

ISRI and other groups hope that a “no-fault” system for disposing of orphan sources will emerge from these efforts. “We want to be able to cut through the red tape so that if you find a source, you can turn it over to someone immediately,” Mattia says. That “someone”—whether from EPA, NRC, CRCPD or DOE—would then take possession of the source and arrange for its disposal, with no further involvement or expense for the scrap processor.

Seeking International Solutions

Internationally, initial steps are being taken to better control radiation hazards and track the potential sources of such threats.

In September 1998, for instance, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the nuclear monitoring arm of the United Nations, held a conference in Dijon, France, that explored the “safety of radiation sources and security of radioactive materials.” Working with other organizations such as the European Commission, the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), and the World Customs Organization, IAEA developed an action plan that aims to establish a system for helping governments develop the regulations needed to track and control radioactive sources, categorize the potential for exposure, locate orphaned sources, deal with radiation-related emergencies, exchange information, and promote education and training on radiation-related issues.

The United States pledged to provide a radiation expert free of charge to the IAEA efforts. “We have a lot to offer in the way of lessons learned,” explains Gwendolyn Bauer of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Multilateral Nuclear Affairs, which is coordinating U.S. participation.

This past May, another UN body—the ad hoc group of experts on steel—held a workshop on radioactive contaminated metallurgical scrap in Prague that concluded with plans to form an international team of radiation experts. ISRI, which will be part of that team, submitted a paper at the workshop calling on the international community to fund new developments in radiation-detection technology and then share this information globally.

Also, ReMA pointed out that there are currently more than a half-dozen ways to measure levels of radioactivity. “While a nuclear scientist can easily understand these [various] terms, they are not so easily used or understood by a scrap processor, truck driver, border guard, or customs official,” ReMA noted, and so the international community should decide on one easily understood method of measuring and quantifying radioactivity.

ISRI also stressed that the problem of radioactivity isn’t limited to sources, orphaned or otherwise. Inherently radioactive material (also known as naturally occurring radioactive material, or NORM) and items contaminated with radiation are the two most common forms of radioactive material to enter the recycling stream, ReMA noted. Yet “no known government agency or private firm is willing to remove such radioactive material from a recycling facility without the recycler incurring significant financial costs.”

Though there’s little activity aimed at solving the NORM or contaminated metal problem, ReMA did call for the future establishment of a worldwide program to identify facilities “that can safely accept and control radioactive scrap or scrap contaminated with radioactive material” so that scrap recyclers could ship this material to those facilities “without incurring significant charges for having unintentionally received it.”

For its own part, ReMA recently developed a training program to help employees at scrap processing plants visually identify radioactive material. The program, which is available as an on-site presentation and soon in video format, focuses on the common signs, symbols, printing, and other elements found on many pieces of radiation-related equipment. It should help employees, especially supervisors, recognize material that’s potentially radioactive and remove it from the scrap stream, Mattia says.

“We find that radiation detectors are good,” he asserts, “but they’re not right 100 percent of the time. And if the difference between 95 percent and 100 percent is that you accidentally injure someone or end up with a $10-million contamination, then you want to close that percentage gap.” 

Fighting Over 'Free Release'

It might seem strange that some of the same government agencies—DOE, NRC, and EPA—that are working hard to keep radioactive material out of the recycling stream are also trying to sell possibly contaminated scrap metal on the open market.

Meanwhile, environmental activists and the media are raising fears that “hot” metal will end up in knives and forks, children’s braces, belt buckles, zippers, and other everyday items.

Welcome to the contentious and convoluted world known as “free release.”

The term refers to the unrestricted release of material such as scrap copper, nickel, aluminum, and steel that has been removed and decontaminated from facilities such as decommissioned nuclear power plants and former nuclear weapons factories. To defray the costs of closing these now-obsolete facilities, the U.S. government wants to sell the scrap metal—perhaps millions of metric tons, according to some estimates.

Currently, NRC is holding hearings on whether and how to establish standards for releasing this metal, which may not be radioactive at all or may still contain “very small amounts of residual radioactivity” even after decontamination.

Other agencies are involved as well because many of the sites are DOE facilities. EPA is following the issue closely through its clean metals program and is helping NRC disseminate technical and economic information. Even a federal judge got into the act by first criticizing a DOE radioactive metal recycling plan but then dismissing a lawsuit aimed at stopping the program.

The issue is complex, notes Mike Mattia, ISRI’s director of risk management. On the one hand, the material to be released will almost certainly be decontaminated to a level below background radiation, perhaps to levels that aren’t detectable at all. But it will still have come from a former nuclear site.

And it’s not an issue likely to go away soon. Small amounts of U.S. nuclear industry metal are already being decontaminated “piecemeal” and released, Mattia notes. In Europe, several countries with free-release rules are handling large amounts of such material, with a European-wide standard expected next year.

Certain groups, among them the Steel Manufacturers Association (SMA) and American Iron and Steel Institute, remain vehemently opposed to free release and prefer that all decontaminated material be restricted to uses such as radiation shielding at nuclear waste storage facilities—which means the material will never enter the regular metal market. “The metal industries can’t become a dumping ground for the discards of the nuclear age or our nation’s Cold War legacy,” SMA argues. •