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Improving Practices for Regulating and Managing Low-Activity Radioactive Waste

Completed

Low-activity radioactive wastes include a broad spectrum of materials for which a regulatory patchwork has evolved over almost 60 years. This study used the term “low-activity waste” to denote radioactive materials declared as waste from a variety of activities—national defense, nuclear power, industry, medicine, research, and mineral recovery. Given this broad spectrum of activities, the committee then developed a concise list of categories that would include low-activity wastes from essentially all sources, yet focused on their inherent radiological properties rather than their origins and emphasized gaps and inconsistencies between their current regulation and management and their actual radiological hazards.

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