Radiological Characterisation of Buried Radioactive Wastes: Integrated Radiation Imaging and Surface Penetrating Radar Approach

Ukaegbu, I. K. and Gamage, K. A.A. (2018) Radiological Characterisation of Buried Radioactive Wastes: Integrated Radiation Imaging and Surface Penetrating Radar Approach. 2nd International Conference on Nuclear Power Plants: Structures, Risk & Decommissioning, London, UK, 10-11 Jun 2018.

Abstract

Traditional methods of characterising wastes buried in opaque materials e.g. soil and concrete, include: logging and micro drilling. These methods are destructive and time consuming with limited spatial extent for sampling. Furthermore, non-destructive techniques such as radiation imaging can only locate these wastes on the surface of the material in which they are buried with no information on how deep the wastes are buried. However, ground penetrating radars (GPR) have proven to be a reliable non-destructive technique for locating and extracting material properties of objects located inside opaque materials. Therefore, this research presents techniques for integrating radiation imaging and GPR for improved characterisation of wastes buried in different materials. One these techniques is the non-destructive three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction of the contaminated subsurface. This is demonstrated using simulation results for the case of contaminated underground pipelines. By fusing the radiation and GPR images, the contaminated portions of the pipes were successfully localised in 3D relative to other parts of the pipe. Such 3D images will be of immense benefit in guiding robotic systems during decommissioning. Also, a novel non-destructive depth estimation technique for buried waste based on an approximate (3D) linear attenuation model have been developed. Initial results have shown that this technique has significant depth profiling ability compared to existing non-destructive techniques. However, the technique requires foreknowledge of the density of the material in which the radiation source is contained. Therefore, the technique is being further improved through the integration of real time density measurement from GPR signals.

• Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Gamage, Professor Kelum
• Authors: Ukaegbu, I. K., and Gamage, K. A.A.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering