Event type:
Evening meeting, Lecture, Regional Group, Virtual event
Organised by:
North West Regional Group
Event status:
EVENT CLOSED
All natural materials are radioactive to some degree due to the presence of naturally occurring radionuclides, but there are wide variations between different rock and soil types and in groundwater as a result of chemistry and geological processes.
Uranium deposits are the only ores exploited specifically for their radioactive properties, but high concentrations of natural radionuclides are also present in ores such as titanium, zircon, niobium/tantalum, rare earths and phosphate rock. Elevated levels of radionuclides are also associated with most metalliferous ores, as well as bulk industrial minerals such as coal, shale, china clay and bauxite.
The term Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORM) is used in situations where the extraction, processing or use of minerals or fossil fuels, or development activities, increase
the potential for human exposure to these natural radionuclides or their environmental release.
The lecture will discuss the history of industrial NORM production and the management of
NORM wastes, which are generated in significantly greater quantities than wastes from the nuclear industry, yet are subject to different standards of regulation.
The NORM issues associated with different industries will be reviewed, including oil and gas production (including shale gas), phosphate production, titanium dioxide manufacture, coal mine dewatering, china clay extraction, water treatment and geothermal energy. The lecture will conclude by discussing the legacy of NORM-contaminated land, highlighting the scale of the problem, difficulty of identification, regulatory issues and factors affecting management.
The lecture will start at 5.00pm.
Speaker
Trevor Jones, Managing Director of AdvanSci Ltd and Visiting Lecturer at the University of Birmingham
Trevor is a Chartered Geologist with over 18 years’ consultancy experience in the management of environmental radioactivity and radioactive wastes. He has been responsible for development of a facility to descale NORM-contaminated oil and gas equipment, and for the permitting of radioactive waste disposal at several landfills. He was a member of the Scottish Government Project Board responsible for developing the UK NORM waste strategy from 2011 to 2013.
Registration and meeting access
Please register for this talk via the Zoom website. You'll also need to download the Zoom app.
You will be sent instructions on how to join the meeting after registration.
Contact
For further information contact the group secretary, Catherine Kenny, via [email protected].