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Decontamination & Decommissioning

We are helping our customers prevent schedule inefficiencies and overspending by carefully planning and designing site characterization and final status surveys.

With a team of health physics experts who have extensive field experience, ORAU knows the support your decontamination and decommissioning project needs—from the characterization phase to the final status survey. We understand the risk of cost overruns, the necessity of high quality characterization, the difficulty of collecting accurate data and all other obstacles contractors and government agencies face on-site during the decontamination and decommissioning process.

In order to provide your remediation project with the support you need, ORAU’s team of health physicists and radiological experts have the necessary experience, procedures and instrumentation to design and implement characterization and final status surveys. Our experts customize these surveys to achieve high-quality, defensible data, and reduce risk for efficient and cost-effective cleanup. With high quality standards, ORAU survey results instill trust and confidence that public health and safety is protected following your site’s cleanup.

After years of proven expertise, ORAU has become a trusted partner to regulators and DOE affiliates in the environmental management community, including federal, state and local governments. ORAU also serves as the primary independent verification contractor and property release technical expert for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Health physicist conducting survey on decommissioning project

What we do

ORAU works to support an efficient, cost-effective and thorough D&D process with the following capabilities:

Qualifications

As a leader in the health physics industry, ORAU’s has been instrumental in developing new environmental assessment standards. ORAU health physics experts were involved with writing the Multi-Agency Radiation Survey and Site Investigation Manual (MARSSIM), now the nationally recognized standard for planning and executing radiological surveys. Other manuals and standards ORAU has helped develop include:

Medical Radiation Safety Training Officer Course instructor and students

Training the D&D workforce

For more than 70 years, ORAU has specialized in health physics and radiation training for scientists, physicians, engineers, educators, emergency responders and other professionals. ORAU’s Professional Training Programs offer courses on a range of topics and skill levels, such as Air Sampling for Radioactive Materials, MARSSIM, Applied Health Physics and Gamma Spectroscopy.

See our course schedule

Our Expert

David King

David King

Health Physicist

Expertise: More than 20 years of experience in human health risk/dose assessment, environmental studies and project management

  • Serves as project manager and technical lead for the assessment of various environmental and non-environmental media, derivation of site-specific cleanup goals, MARSSIM training and technical consultation covering a range of health physics related topics.
  • Member: Health Physics Society and Project Management Institute
  • Co-author, 2015. “Lessons Learned on the Presentation of Scan Data,” Operational Radiation Safety, Vol. 109, No. 5, S212-S218.
  • Co-author, 2013. “An Approach for Addressing Hard-to-Detect Hot Spots,” Operational Radiation Safety, Vol. 104, No. 5, S52-S59.
  • Co-author, 2012. “Minimum Detectable Concentration as a Function of Gamma Walkover Survey Technique,” Operational Radiation Safety, Vol. 102, No. 2, S22-S27.

Certifications: Certified Health Physicist, Project Management Professional

Contact us

For more information about ORAU's environmental assessment services, contact Derek Hagemeyer at 865.241.3615 or derek.hagemeyer@orau.org.

For more information about contracting with ORAU, contact Kathy Rollow at 865.574.4390 or kathy.rollow@orau.org.