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TSD-DOSE: Waste Management Dose Assessment Code

Past practices at U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) field facilities resulted in the presence of trace amounts of radioactive materials in some hazardous chemical wastes shipped from these facilities. In May 1991, the DOE Office of Waste Operations issued a nationwide moratorium on shipping all hazardous waste until procedures could be established to ensure that only nonradioactive hazardous waste would be shipped from DOE facilities to commercial treatment, storage, and disposal (TSD) facilities.

To aid in assessing the potential impacts of shipments of such material, EVS developed a radiological assessment computer model (or code) on the basis of detailed radiological assessments of potential radiological exposures and doses for eight commercial hazardous waste TSD facilities. The model, called TSD-DOSE, is designed to incorporate waste-specific and site-specific data to estimate potential radiological doses to on-site workers and the off-site public from waste-handling operations at a TSD facility. The code is intended to help develop appropriate authorized release limits for DOE waste. In addition, TSD-DOSE provides DOE and commercial TSD facilities with rapid and cost-effective methods for assessing potential human radiation exposures from the processing of chemical wastes contaminated with trace amounts of radionuclides.

The TSD-DOSE software is available for downloading at no cost.