Evaluation of Commercially Available Precursors for Obscuring Wet Industrial Irradiator Facility Pools to Delay Adversarial Source Removal (Part 2)
The behavior of commercially available potential obscurants for cobalt-60 (60Co) wet-source storage industrial irradiator facilities (IRFs) were further evaluated for corrosive behavior of Nordion C-188 pencil stubs and obscurant properties under radiation exposure (60Co). The potential obscurants studied included: titania aqueous dispersions (TAD - water soluble white paint), Chlorazol Black (CBOD - Chlorazol Black organic dye), powdered milk (COW - calcium obscurant in water), diatomaceous earth (DEA - diatomaceous earth additive), and rhodamine 6G (R6G). For corrosion efforts, stubs from an inert C-188 pencil-source rod were soaked in obscurant solutions and visually inspected. For radiation stability, obscurant samples were exposed to 60Co radiation sources at 207 rad/s. The results from these studies reveal: the obscurants had no impact on the surrogate samples and may assist in terms of corrosion resistance; materials that did not rely on organic compounds to provide obscurance performed the best, as the organic compounds decomposed too rapidly in the high radiation environment, whereas the materials survived.