Radioactive waste is produced by any nuclear facility. To reduce the risks on the environment, radioactive wastes are characterised so they can be sent to the correct waste streams for storage and disposal.

In legacy sites or fuel processing facilities, a whole range of characterisation tools are available for the workers to understand the parameters of the waste produced.

As of today, almost 100% of radioactive wastes are characterised and we know exactly their different key parameters. However, there is still a small fraction of legacy “historic” wastes that have unknow characteristics (drums that date back to periods when computer tools did not exist and when the referencing of content was limited).

Setting up a full fixed assay line for these unknown legacy wastes has quite a few downsides:

• A bespoke assay line requires great expertise, setting up from scratch is time consuming and expensive,
• Setup as a fixed capability, it requires modification within nuclear facilities, has an impact on the operational and safety procedures of the facility,
• With space constraints, it is often not a viable option and requires expensive modification to the facility housing capability.