Thorium and uranium comp ounds are considered “source material”, and are regulated under a general license from the NRC.

The two NRC links below will send you to the regulations.

http://www.nrc.gov/m aterials/srcmaterial.html

http:// www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part040/

If the material is only regulated as radioactive and does not have any other residual hazards (for example uranyl nitrate is also an oxidizer), then it should be fairly cheap to get rid of.  You may want to contact Thomas Gray & Associates http://www.tgainc.com/ for disposal opt ions.

Sincerely,

John

nau.edu/orc

A local laboratory here has four bottles of thorium and uranium salts they’d like to get rid of.  Looking into it, I found it was goin g to cost close to $4000 to transport and dispose of less than a pound of materi al at a facility in Houston; this is the only facility I can find that will ac cept this material.  These are not RCRA hazardous, and the radioactivity ha s to be extremely low.  The DOT numbers are 2909 and 2910; there doesn̵ 7;t appear to be any difficulty shipping them. 

My question is – what are other labs doing to dispose of this type of material?  Is it possible to encase them in concrete or another inert material and dispose in a municipal system?  Is there anyone recycling these salts?  Any ideas?

Thanks….

Russ Phifer

Russ Phifer

WC Environmental, LLC

1085C Andrew Drive

West Chester, PA  19380

610-696-9220x12/ fax 610-344-7519

rphifer**At_Symbol_Here**wcenvironmental.com

 

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