They develop a technology to characterize radioactivity in nuclear waste containers

VALENCIA, 27 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Institute of Corpuscular Physics - a joint center of the University of Valencia (UV) and the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) - and the National Radioactive Waste Company (Enresa) have developed a new nuclear waste management model that provides solutions to these problems. It is a portable, geometry-independent tomographic system that allows three-dimensional reconstruction of images for the detection of gamma radiation.

This system uses a gamma radiation camera and a visible camera that, combined, allow radioactivity to be visualized using augmented reality (AR) and computer vision techniques; a disruptive innovation in the nuclear industry that will allow the real activity of radioactive waste to be precisely detailed, which will optimize the classification process for its subsequent treatment, its correct storage and its definitive control.

"This technique allows us to develop transportable devices that can be easily maneuvered by workers in the sector and that guarantee precise measurements of waste activity, making the invisible visible," comments Salvador Tortajada, co-author of the work, in a statement.

"This means safer management of radioactive waste and reduces uncertainties regarding control and management by future generations," adds Francisco Albiol, CSIC researcher at the IFIC and also co-author of the research.

This work, the product of a patent owned by the Universitat de València, the CSIC and Enresa, has recently been published in Scientific Reports, a magazine of the Nature group.

The patent was licensed at the time to Tecnatom, a group company of the multinational Westinhouse, present worldwide in the nuclear market. This is a non-exclusive patent for Spanish territory.

The collaboration between Enresa and IFIC for the development of the new technology has already generated two doctoral theses, one on research on environment recognition applied to resources and another, of an industrial nature, on volumetric evaluation systems. These, in turn, have generated two new industrial patents.