For 40 years now, since its early days as a laboratory specialising in carrying out tests under the Environmental Radiological Surveillance Programme, DRACE GEOCISA's radiochemistry lab has been performing radiochemical measurements and tests. The first to be fine-tuned were those included in these programmes and in environmental matrices (water, soil, air, foodstuffs, vegetation and animals). Subsequently, after acquiring two decades of experience of these tasks, new needs began to emerge in the area of radiological characterisation.
As facilities reach new stages in their life cycles, new challenges arise for radiochemical measurements: new testing matrices and new isotopes that have not previously been determined. The experience acquired by the lab's personnel made it easier for them to fine-tune new radiochemical tests on new matrices, mostly on materials of all types used in structures, systems and equipment at facilities, and new radioactive isotopes that were appearing in the new study areas.
DRACE GEOCISA's radiochemistry lab has been involved from the outset in the first project to dismantle a nuclear power station, at the Vandellós I plant.
In 1995 the lab entered a new phase, in which it became involved both in sampling campaigns and on-site measurements for preliminary characterisation campaigns as well as in new laboratory-based radiochemical measurements. Since then, it has been present and continuously involved in all the development stages of all the dismantling projects that have arisen: preliminary and additional characterisation campaigns at different stages of the progress of the project, quality-control campaigns for declassification processes with specific equipment, and characterisation studies of diverse types of waste (resin, concrete, fibreglass, etc.).
Today, as well as participating in these radiochemical-characterisation campaigns associated with the different phases of the projects mentioned, radiochemical characterisations are also carried out of different material currents from operational nuclear plants. Having carried out so many campaigns on so many samples over so many years, the lab has been able to significantly optimise its processes and technical resources and considerably shorten turnaround times.