Arctic military environmental cooperation radiological controls at Russian facilities — Application of the Picasso system

The Arctic Military Environmental Cooperation (AMEC) is a cooperative effort between military establishments of the Russian Federation, Norway, United States, and United Kingdom to reduce potential environmental threats from military installations and activities in the Arctic region and enhancing the environmental security of all three countries. The goal of this project is to enhance the ability of the Russian Navy to perform effectively and safely radioecological monitoring of sites at facilities dismantling nuclear submarines and handling and disposition of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and the radioactive waste by-products. Radioecological monitoring is needed to protect workers at the sites engaged in work involving the dismantlement of nuclear submarines, the local public of the surrounding communities, and the environment. Radioecological monitoring is being accomplished by the installation of a centralized radiological surveillance system, the Picasso Environmental Monitoring system developed by the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE), Halden, Norway. The Russian Institute for Nuclear Safety modified the system for use at Russian Federation Naval bases and developed a working model for its intended application. The working model includes Russian manufactured terrestrial and underwater gamma detectors, smart controllers, radio-modems for off-site transmission of data coupled with the Picasso Environmental Monitoring system installed into local computers, work stations, and a centralized server to monitor the real-time activity of the particular site. The selected sites for the installation of Picasso are the Polyarninsky Shipyard No. 10 and the RTP Atomflot shipyards. The AMEC project teams visited Polyarninsky Shipyard No. 10 and the RTP Atomflot shipyards in November 2003 to monitor the progress of the installation of the detection and monitoring systems. The implementation of the Picasso system will be integrated with other AMEC projects at both sites. Plans are being developed to implement the use of this system at most Russian Federation Naval sites handling SNF.