Tritium Atmospheric Transport and Deposition Following Acute Releases - Comparisons with a Simple Transport Model

During 35 years of operation of the Savannah River Site (SRS) there have been a small number of inadvertent tritium releases to the atmosphere. After detection of the releases by stack monitors, field crews were dispatched to determine the concentrationoftritiumintheenvironment The objective of the measurements was to verify environmental concentrations calculated by dose assessment models. Airsamplers were used to verify the concentration levels and tritium fonns during the plume passage. It was not feasible to take enough samples in the plume path to determine the two-dimensional disthbution of tritium concentration in the plume. However, the ground level disthbution was very well reflected in vegetation samples. Therefore, it is usually possible to determine plume shape, plume width, and the relative maximum concentration as the plume moves downwind from the vegetation samples. In eight of the nine releases studied, the monitoring data allowed comparison with atmospheric transport models.