Chalk River Laboratories (CNL) is a Canadian nuclear research facility in Deep River near Chalk River, about 110 mi north-west of Ottawa. The CNL Chalk River site is a federal site that is contaminated with waste that was generated over decades of research and development. In 2014, the CNL was given control over operations at the Chalk River site by the government. 
    CNL has been working on getting official approval for a “near surface disposal facility for the disposal of solid, low-level radioactive waste” to be located near the laboratory at Deep River, Ontario. Originally in 2017, CNL wanted to include a small percentage of intermediate-level waste but, yielding to critics, that part of the project has been eliminated. Sandra Fraught is with the CNL. She says that the intended “inventory is now only low-level radioactive waste.”
   The new plan calls for remains of decommissioned buildings on the campus of the Chalk River campus to be taken to their new disposal site. In addition, contaminated soil from the CNL site as well as a small amount of low-level nuclear waste from other sites can be disposed of there.   
    The CNL is part of a consortium that includes SNC Lavalin which is a Canadian company based in Montreal that provides engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) services in various industries including mining and metallurgy, oil and gas, environment and water, infrastructure, and clean power. The consortium must obtain environmental approvals and meet the licensing requirements before they can begin the construction of their new waste disposal facility. If the necessary requirements are met, the facility may be open by 2021.
    Critics have attacked the planned facility as a nuclear waste “dump. They are concerned that it might eventually leach into the Ottawa River which is just three quarters of a mile from the propose site for the facility. Gordon Edwards is the president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. He said in a press release, “Radioactive wastes should never be abandoned right beside major water bodies.” 
     In response, Fraught saaid “We have now gone downstream to ensure that there would be no effects on the Ottawa River as a result of the project. By expanding the regional study area, we’ve included a greater portion of the Ottawa River.” She says that the CNL plans has been expanded to include modelling and monitoring of an five mile section of the Ottawa River downstream from the proposed facility.
   Ole Hendrickson is a former government research scientist and researcher for the group Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area. He states that even with the recent revisions to the CNL plan, their proposed waste disposal facility does not comply with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) guidelines for handling radioactive waste. Canadian law does not mandate that CNL adhere to the IAEA guidelines. He said, “So if the government itself, which is responsible for policy, does not have a policy that says it will meet international standards, that basically leaves Canadian nuclear laboratories free to do whatever they want. The federal government is the owner of the waste, not Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. It’s responsible for safe disposal, and it has simply abdicated its responsibility by handing over it to this consortium.”

Ambient office  = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 119 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 121 nanosieverts per hour

Bartlett pear from Central Market = 62 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 83 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 66 nanosieverts per hour

Part 5 of 5 parts (Please read Parts 1,2,3 and 4 first)
     Following seven years of research, the team at the Glasgow was given intellectual property rights to their work. In 2016, the team started a private company called Lynkeos Technology. The company is working on its first commercial contact which is to create images of vitrified waste that is created by a new process know as GeoMelt. GeoMelt is a process by which dangerous, contaminated materials such as radioactive waste and heavy metals are mixed with clean soil, a blend of industrial minerals, and/or glass frit (A “frit” is a ceramic composition that has been fused, quenched, and granulated.) This combination of materials is then melted to create an extremely hard and leach-resistant glass product.
    The researchers have shown that muons can reveal whether or not the waste has melted uniformly and whether it contains any metallic items. The research team has been utilizing their new detector at Sellafield since October of 2018 to image waste that contains radioactive materials, including uranium. They are now working on the creation of images of the contents of waste boxes that are about three cubic yards in size.
    Researchers at the universities of Bristol and Sheffield in the U.K. and the Warsaw Technical University in Poland are also working on muon detection systems. This collaboration is commissioning the development of a fifteen-foot-high muon detector which is constructed with resistive plate chambers. These detect the ionization of gases with metallic strips that are attached to glass plates. Several utilities in Europe are interested in testing the new detector but none of them have committed so far. The leader of the collaboration said that “It’s not easy to get on sites with nuclear waste and ask them to get their drums out.” 
    The sensitivity of debating the handling of nuclear waste makes it difficult to develop any new technology that could help. This is especially the case with respect to dealing with spent nuclear fuel. Safeguard agencies may be reluctant to adopt new technologies such as muon detection. The IAEA has stated that it does not currently use muon detection for verification of the presence of nuclear materials because “there are still limitations on its use for this purpose”. It has said that it is following muon detection technology development.
     Aymanns of the Jülich Research Centre points out that it is proper for the IAEA and other nuclear materials monitoring agencies to decide whether and when they would be interested in deploying new monitoring technology. She says that scientists can help move the process of adoption along by carrying out field tests. She has no doubt that new monitoring technology is needed. She says, “Even if you have surveillance you have to be prepared for it to fail. Maybe it will never happen but if it ever does you have to be ready.”
    Considering the huge amount of spent nuclear fuel and other dangerous nuclear waste that are scattered around the globe, the development of new monitoring technology is obviously a major priority.

Ambient office  = 92 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 110 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 106 nanosieverts per hour

Tomato from Central Market = 75 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water =93 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 71 nanosieverts per hour

Part 4 of 5 Parts (Please read Parts 1,2 and 3 first)
     Aymanns contacted Paolo Checchia at the Legnaro National Laboratory in Padua, Italy. Checchia and colleagues are also researching muon detectors constructed with drift tubes. Their work is based on technology that was developed for Compact Muon Solenoid detectors at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. They have computer simulations that shows that is theoretically possible to spot if a fuel assembly has been removed from a dry cask. They have created a prototype detector that contains sixty-four drift tubes in eight layers.
     Last year, Checchia and colleagues performed tests that were partly funded by Euratom which is the organization that is responsible for monitoring spent nuclear fuel within Europe. For these tests, a prototype detector was attached to a dry cask at the Neckarwestheim nuclear power plant near Stuttgart. They were not able to make a detailed study of the contents of the test casks. However, the team did show that they could detect muon behavior above the faint radiation from the contents of the cask. They will need to make bigger detectors to determine the presence or absence of fuel assemblies in dry casks.
   Finland and Sweden could definitely benefit from muography. Both of these countries are developing geological repositories for spent nuclear waste. Morris and his team have computer simulations that show that it should be possible to identify missing or replaced fuel assemblies with only twenty-four hours of muon tracking in the copper and iron casks that will be used in Scandinavia. The researchers say that carrying out these measurements immediately before burying the dry casks would be “the last chance for inspectors to evaluate state declarations of spent fuel disposal”.
    Muons can be used to images other types of nuclear waste beyond spent nuclear fuel. One of these is the metal cladding of the tubes that contain the uranium pellets which has to be removed when spent nuclear fuel is reprocessed. In the U.K. there are tens of thousands five hundred liter stainless-steel drums full of fuel rod cladding that is encased in concrete.
    Ralf Kaiser works at the University of Glasgow. He says that some cladding-filled drums have been bulging. This suggests that there may be some spent nuclear fuel in the drum. Uranium has a tendency to expand when it oxidizes which could account for the bulging. Since the drums are hard to access, it is difficult to know how many drums might contain spent nuclear fuel. Bulging might result in drums cracking open which could release radioactive materials. The ability to identify which drums contain spent fuel could help prevent such leaks.
      Kaiser and his colleagues at the University are working on muon detectors that consist of thousands of plastic scintillating fibers. Collaborating with researchers from the National Nuclear Laboratory at the Sellafield reprocessing plant, the Glasgow team first created a small prototype followed by a full-sized system that could hold one five hundred liter drum. A series of laboratory tests from 2015 on showed that the system could image a range of objects inside one of the concrete drums. This included detection of a one-inch long cylinder of uranium.
Please read Part 5

Ambient office  = 119 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 97 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Red bell pepper from Central Market = 121 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 85 nanosieverts per hour

Filtered water = 69 nanosieverts per hour