Research
Funded Research
Facility maintenance and in vivo radiobioassay services
The Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring and Research Center (CEMRC) has received $197,790 in funding from Washington TRU Solutions WTS). CEMRC will continue providing in vivo radiobioassay measurements on workers at the U.S. Department of Energy Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, NM, a deep geologic repository that has been disposing of transuranic nuclear waste for the past eight years.
In vivo radiobioassay includes measurements of certain types of uranium, thorium, radium, californium, curium, americium, neptunium, plutonium, europium and cerium, all in the lungs. In the whole body, certain types of the following radionuclides are measured: potassium, europium, caesium, antimony, ruthenium, cobalt, chromium, manganese, zinc, cerium, iodine, iron, zirconium and barium. The measurements take about a half-hour per person. Over the past 10 years, no worker has been found to have had any contamination originating from WIPP.
The award also funds CEMRC to continue providing radiological laboratory space and technical staff and houses WTS scientists to measure radionuclides such as uranium, plutonium and americium in air, soil, water and other media including biological materials. The collaboration between CEMRC and WTS has resulted in the only radiological laboratory with a sample turn-around time of less than eight hours. Over the past 10 years, no contamination originating from WIPP has been detected from these vectors.
CEMRC is part of the College of Engineering Institute for Energy and the Environment.