The Hanau Land Remediation and Soil Segregation Project

Radioactively contaminated land and its remediation is a growing sector of the Nuclear Business. The contamination is often associated with both naturally occurring and man-made radionuclides. A significant proportion of the waste contains only small amounts or low concentrations of radionuclides, and therefore much of the remediated material can be considered to be for “free release”. It has often not been possible to get adequate specific information on these materials, so a monitoring system is needed for their classification and characterisation. At the former Fuel Fabrication Facility NUKEM-Old in Hanau, Germany, all process equipment and installations were dismantled, building structure surfaces have been decontaminated. After final measurements of building contamination, mainly applying in-situ gamma-spectrometry, and approval for “free release”, or for dumping the material, all buildings were demolished. Since then, an Automated Soil Segregation System is being successfully used for the segregation and measuring of the remaining 20.000 tonnes of radioactively contaminated, or at least suspicious soil material, building foundations and sewerage system components.