[ RadSafe ] Kr-85

[Jim Hardeman]

Frank *
 
Due to the 10.7 yr half-life of Kr-85, noble gas decay doesn't help a whole lot in minimizing releases of Kr-85, not does it buy you much with Xe-131m (11.8 day), Xe-133 (5.2 day), or Xe-133m (2.2 day). It DOES however, help to minimize releases of Kr-85m (4.5 hr), Kr-87 (76 minutes), Kr-88 (2.8 hr), Xe-135 (9.1 hr) and Xe-138 (14 minutes).
 
My $0.02 worth ...
 
Jim

>>> "Frank Helk" <frank.helk at nis-ingenieure.de> 9/23/2005 7:53:54 >>>

On Fri, 23 Sep 2005 09:50:21 +0200, Marcel Schouwenburg wrote for Prof. Raabe:

>Thousands of curies of Kr-85 are released into the atmosphere each year 
>from every nuclear power plant. 

While there's indeed Kr-85 released from NPPs, that's not the complete truth:

In NPPs (at least in Germany) the exhaust air contaminated with i.e. Kr-85 is led thru activated coal tanks before blowing it thru the chimney. The activated 
coal adsorbs the noble gases and other gaseous contaminants for some time, thereby delaying the release and allowing them tho decay. This leads to a 
significant reduction in the released amount of noble gases.

-FH


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