Measurement and Estimation for the Clearance of Radioactive Waste Contaminated with Radioisotopes for Medical Application

Changbum Kim; MinSeok Park; Gi-sub Kim; Haijo Jung; Seongjoo Jang

doi:10.14316/pmp.2014.25.1.8

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Kim, Park, Kim, Jung, and Jang: Measurement and Estimation for the Clearance of Radioactive Waste Contaminated with Radioisotopes for Medical Application

Original Article

Progress in Medical Physics 2014;25(1):8-14.

Published online: 17 March 2014

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14316/pmp.2014.25.1.8

Measurement and Estimation for the Clearance of Radioactive Waste Contaminated with Radioisotopes for Medical Application

Changbum Kim^∗, MinSeok Park^†, Gi-sub Kim^†, Haijo Jung^†, Seongjoo Jang^†,

^∗Department of Radiation Application Safety Evaluation, Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety, Daejeon, Korea

^†Radiation Safety and Section, Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Sciences, Seoul, Korea

^‡Department of Radiology, Dongshin University, Naju, Korea

Correspondence:Seongjoo Jang (sjjang@dsu.ac.kr) Tel: 82-61-330-3321, Fax: 82-61-330-3309

Received 6 March 2014 Accepted 4 February 2014

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The amounts of radioactive wastes to be disposed in the medical institute have been increased due to development of radiation diagnosis and therapy rapidly. They are produced mostly by the very short lived radioisotopes such as ¹⁸F used in PET/CT, ^99mTc, ¹²³I, ¹²⁵I and ²⁰¹Tl, etc. IAEA proposed a criteria for the clearance level of waste which depends on the individual (10μSv/y) and collective dose (1 man-Sv/y), and concentration of each nuclide (IAEA Safety Series No 111-P-1.1, 1992 and IAEA RS-G-1.7, 2004). Radioactive wastes of ¹8F, ^99mTc, ¹²³I, ¹²⁵I and ²⁰¹TI in the several types of container like Marinelli beaker, vial and plastic, were collected to measure the concentration of the waste of each nuclide in accordance with IAEA criteria. The measurement method and procedure of determining specific activity of the wastes using gamma emitters like MCA, gamma counter and beta emitters were developed. For the efficiency calibration of the detectors, CRM (certified reference material) which has the same dimension and shape was provided by Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS). Correction factor of the radioactivity decay was calculated based on the measurement results, and the consideration of mutual relation with theoretical equation. The result of this study will be proposed as ISO standard.

Keywords: Radioactive waste, Self disposal, Medical radioactive isotope, Specific radioactivity

REFERENCES

1. Park JK, Kim SK, et al. Enhancement of the Early/Precise Diagnosis Based on the Measurement of SUVs in F-18 FDG PET/CT Whole-body Image. J Korean J Med Phys. 24(3):176–182. 2013.

2. Kim SJ, Han EO. Changes in External Radiation Dose Rate for PET-CT Test Patients. J Radiation Protection. 37(2):103–107. 2012.

3. Shapito J. Radiation Protection: A guide for scientists, regulator and Physicians. 4th ed. Harvard University Press;2002. ), pp.p. 359–371.

4. IAEA Safety Series No.40. Applying Radiation Safety Standards in Nuclear Medicine. 2005.

5. Ravichandran R, Binukumar JP, Sreeram R, Arunkumar LS. An overview of radioactive waste disposal procedures of a nuclear medicine J Med Phys. 36(2):95–99. 2011.

6. IAEA Safety Series No.111. Classification of Radioactive Waste. 1994.

7. IAEA TECDOC-1183. Management of radioactive waste from the use of radionuclides in medicine. 2000.

8. IAEA Safety Series No.111-P-1.1. Application of exemption principles to the recycle and reuse of materials from nuclear facilities. 1992.

9. IAEA Safety Guide RS-G-1.7. Application of the concepts of exclusion, exemption and clearance. 2004.

10. http://www.nssc.go.kr/nssc/information/law4_4.jsp. The code of nuclear safety and security commission Jae2012-59Ho:. Regulation for the clearance of radioactive waste. 2012.

Fig. 1.

The photographies of Marinelli beaker containing the radioactive waste from nuclear medicine department. (a) Marinelli beaker with radioactive wasted container and saline solution, (b) the dissolution and diffusion of radioactive nuclide in saline solution using a stirrer.

Fig. 2.

The photography of various CRMs for the efficiency measurement of various measuring containers and the detection system.

Table 1.

Radioactivity measurement according to the incident types of ¹⁸ F radioactive waste.

Type of radioactive waste	Syringe cotton ball	Syringe (5 ml)	Syringe (10 ml+3 Way)
No. of sample (n)	20	20	20
Specific radioactivity (Bq/g): m±σ	362±4	8.14×10⁵±2.78×10⁵	8.32×10⁴±3.39×10⁴
(Mean) storage period to clearance level (day)	0.11	1.43	1.06

Table 2.

Radioactivity measurement according to the incident types of ^99m Tc radioactive waste.

Type of radioactive waste	Syringe cotton ball	Syringe (1 ml)	Syringe (5 ml)
No. of sample (n)	14	14	45
Specific radioactivity (Bq/g): m±σ	6.38×10⁶±1.8277	5.57×10⁴±1.775	1.34×10⁷±5.13×10⁶
(Mean) storage period to clearance level (day)	3.44	1.86	6.17

Table 3.

Radioactivity measurement according to the incident types of ¹²³I radioactive waste.

Type of radioactive waste	Syringe cotton ball	Syringe (1 ml)
No. of sample (n)	20	20
Specific radioactivity (Bq/g): m±σ	8.25×10⁵±1.0410⁶	6.33×10⁶±4.08×10⁶
(Mean) storage period to clearance level (day)	7.53	12.55

Table 4.

Radioactivity measurement according to the incident types of ²⁰¹Tl radioactive waste.

Radionuclide		Tl-201
Type of radioactive waste	Syringe cotton ball	Syringe (3 ml+3 Way)	Syringe (10 ml+3 Way)
No. of sample (n)	4	6	3
Specific radioactivity (Bq/g): m±σ	1.65×10⁵±2.51×10⁵	4.31×10⁵±2.30×10⁵	4.64×10⁴±2.52×10⁴
Radionuclide		Tl-202
Type of radioactive waste	Syringe cotton ball	Syringe (3 ml+3 Way)	Syringe (10 ml+3 Way)
No. of sample (n)	4	6	3
Specific radioactivity (Bq/g): m±σ	N/A∗	1.00×10⁴±2.07×10⁴	1.52×10²±9.40×10¹
(Mean) storage period to clearance level (day)	-	80.03	11.45

^∗ N/A: Not Available.

Table 5.

Radioactivity measurements according to the incident types of ¹²⁵I (in vitro) radioactive waste.

Type of sample	No. of sample (n)	Specific radioactivity (Bq/g)			(Mean) storage period to clearance level (day)
Type of sample	No. of sample (n)	Mean±SD∗	Max.	Min.	(Mean) storage period to clearance level (day)
T3	100	51.6±27.1	130.2	5.6	0
T4	100	44.5±24.3	94.3	10.0	0
TSH	100	20.5±51.1	282.8	0.2	0
FREE T4	100	56.9±27.0	140.9	6.6	0
Anti-TG	100	11.7±22.3	114.3	0.5	0
Anti-TMS	100	34.4±24.1	83.8	1.4	0
TG	100	15.2±52.1	315.2	0.1	0
CEA	100	21.1±47.5	208.1	0.4	0
CA19-9	44	23.8±52.7	262.4	1.3	0
LH	54	18.6±39.5	187.7	0.3	0
FSH	54	16.9±34.1	171.3	1.2	0

^∗ SD: Standard deviation.

Table 6.

Types of radioactive waste sample occurred from the in vitro examinations of ¹²⁵I.

Types of Examination	Reagent	Purpose of examination
Hormone test	T3	Thyroid function Test
	T4	Thyroid function Test
	TSH	Test for syndrome of inappropriate secretion of TSH
	Free T4	Thyroid function Test
	TG	Test for Metastatic cancer by thyroid cancer
	LH	Infertility evaluation
	FSH	Infertility evaluation
	Anti-TG	Autoimmunethyroiditis Test
	Anti-TMS	Autoimmunethyroiditis Test
Test for cancer, hepatitis, and anemia	CEA	Test for metastatic cancer for liver
	CA19-9	Test for pancreatic cancer and stomach cancer

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