Review of technologies for preventing secondary transport of soluble and particulate radiological contamination from roadways, roadside vegetation, and adjacent soils

Abstract

Transport of contaminants from roadways to the environment is well known, although studies of technologies for preventing and managing this appear infrequently in the literature. This paper reviews technologies studied for radiological contaminants. In addition to nuclear facility decommissioning, nuclear power plant accidents at Chernobyl (Former Soviet Union), Fukushima (Japan) and elsewhere have provided real world situations to both develop and test technologies to remediate radiological contamination and to return roadways, along with adjacent vegetation and soil, to prior use. From publications arising from these efforts, technologies were reviewed for radioactive material with two distinct properties (water-soluble and insoluble radioactive contaminants). The reported characteristics and capabilities of technologies are summarized in this review. This review also presents logistical considerations of implementation of the technologies, including waste management which can be an extreme impediment to rapid remediation if generated quantities of hazardous waste exceed local handling capacity. The summarized literature review suggests future avenues of work, chiefly for insoluble particulates, focused on technologies which may be mechanistically applicable to their remediation. While the underlying chemical and physical mechanisms that contribute to transport differ among contaminants, the studies reviewed here might also be applicable to non-radioactive contaminants, because the presence of radioactivity is largely independent of the underlying mechanisms.

Keywords

• Roads
• Street cleaning
• Street sweeping
• Radioactivity
• Vegetation
• Soils