Workshop on Radiological Surveys in Support of the Edgemont Clean-up Action Program

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, has given Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL) the responsibility for the development of procedures for the identification of offsite structures and properties in the vicinity of Edgemont, South Dakota, that require remedial action because of elevated radiation levels caused by residual radioactivity as defined in the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act of 1978. In order to acquaint interested investigators with the procedures PNL has developed and the measurements that have been performed at Edgemont using these procedures, and also to obtain suggestions for the improvement of these procedures, PNL organized a "Workshop on Radiological Surveys in Support of the Edgemont Clean-up Action Program" on behalf of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This workshop was held in Denver on January 21 and 22, 1981. On the first day of the workshop an in-depth discussion of the procedures employed in the entire radiological survey program at Edgemont was held. It included a description of the equipment, techniques and procedures employed in radon daughter measurements within structures, indoor and outdoor gamma radiation surveys, and 226Ra measurements in surface and sub-surface soil samples. On the second day, the results of the measurements that have been conducted at Edgemont were presented. During the afternoon an open discussion of the radiological survey procedures used at Edgemont was held for the purpose of obtaining suggestions for the possible improvement of these procedures. Many useful suggestions were made and a few modifications in the survey procedures at Edgemont have been made in response to these suggestions