The development of an expert system for the characterization of containersof contaminated waste

Scientists at the Mississippi State University Diagnostic Instrumentation a nd Analysis Laboratory and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory are developing an expert system to aid in the determination of the proper disposition of containers of transuranic and low-level-alpha-con taminated waste generated as a byproduct of Department of Energy defense-re lated programs. This system will consider a variety of information such as real-time radiography and the data from both passive and active neutron ass ay systems to classify the containers into one of the two categories-those that meet the requirements for being shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot P lant in New Mexico and those that do not. We describe the development of a prototype of the expert system. We also describe the approach used to repre sent and reason with information from a variety of sources as well as the u ncertainty that is inherent in such information. We discuss the strengths a nd weaknesses of the various artificial intelligence techniques that were c onsidered for use in the expert system. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.