New Year... New License?
Year after year thousands of licensees across the United States must go through the tedious task of renewing their radioactive materials licenses with either their local "Agreement State" or in the event they are in a non-agreement state; with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). We too at ADCO have been there as well with our own licenses and often times found ourselves asking, what do we even need to keep this on our license for? Referring to old radioactive instruments or sources we had in-house.
Each January our staff becomes inundated with radioactive licensees calling and e-mailing into our office questions about possibly disposing of radioactive sources and whether or not it is finally time to do so. In many instances the sources our clients are contacting us about date all the way back to when President Kennedy was in office and the first question that comes to our mind at ADCO is why do you still even have these sources? In most cases the sources are expired and/or non-useable so we just do not see the point to keeping these on a license where they first off will need to be tracked, inventoried, leak tested periodically, and you will need to be sure to keep good records on each of them in the event you are inspected by whatever regulatory agency represents your state, so we really need to ask you, what is the point to keeping those type of sources on-site? Trust us when we say this, the cost to dispose of the sources is NOT going to go down as time goes on. In many cases prices have more than doubled to dispose of radioactive sources in recent years.
The other thing to ask yourself when leaving old sources such as expired sheet/flood sources, Brachy Therapy Needles, Eye Applicator Sources, old Calibration Sources laying around in labs and in cabinets is why keep all that extra liability on-site? It just makes good business sense to get rid of radioactive sources no longer in use to reduce your total overall liability from employees being exposed to these expired sources, the potential of contaminating a workspace in the event a source begins leaking, risk from being fined from a regulator for not following some regulation properly, etc.
ADCO Services has specialized in radioactive source disposal since 1965 and has disposed of hundreds of thousands of radioactive sources without incident. In 2019, do the right thing, make a New Year's resolution to clean house and properly dispose of your expired and un-useable radioactive sources. Our staff is fully trained in the proper shipping, paperwork preparation, labeling requirements, and disposal criteria associated with disposing of a radioactive source.
Please visit our source disposal page to learn more about ADCO's radioactive source disposal program.
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