[ RadSafe ] Tritium found near VT Yankee (panic time!).

[Dixon, John E. (CDC/ONDIEH/NCEH)]

Tritium is produced high in the Earth's atmosphere (cosmogenic). It combines with oxygen to form tritiated water. I was not discussing He-3. Here are some numbers about what is in the Earth's oceans:

Tritium 
3.7 × 10 e17 Bq in the Pacific
1.9 × 10 e17 Bq in the Atlantic
7.4 × 10 e17 Bq in all oceans 

Which gives an average NATURAL tritium activity concentration of 0.0006 Bq/l.

If you do the math, this results in 2 e7 CURIES (20 million) of Tritium in Earth's oceans.

John Dixon


-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu [mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Brennan, Mike (DOH)
Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2011 1:22 PM
To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) MailingList
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Tritium found near VT Yankee (panic time!).

Not true!  

The fusion folk wax poetic about the glories of helium-3, and are even
willing to go to the Moon to mine it (I am very much in favor of going
to the Moon for a lot of reasons, but He3 isn't the driver for me).  If
you have tritium, you can have He-3 for little difficulty or expense.  

Just concentrate the H3 (not hard, and not really necessary if you don't
care about volume), react the H3 with something easier to store than
hydrogen gas (water is easy, but probably some solid would be better),
then store in a pressure tight vessel.  Place it under a vacuum, then
wait.  Yes, it takes a while, but if you structure your business plan
right, people will pay you to take the raw material.  

Whether He3 actually can make fusion pay is left as an exercise to the
reader.

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
[mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Dixon, John E.
(CDC/ONDIEH/NCEH)
Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2011 10:10 AM
To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Tritium found near VT Yankee (panic time!).

It should be noted that there are millions of curies (perhaps many
billions of curies) of tritium in Earth's oceans. (By all means research
this point and respond!) The only thing you can do with tritium
(tritiated water) is dilute it before releasing it.


John Dixon

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
[mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Steven Dapra
Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2011 7:55 PM
To: radsafe at agni.phys.iit.edu
Subject: [ RadSafe ] Tritium found near VT Yankee (panic time!).

Aug. 18

	The article begins:

"The Vermont Department of Health said it has found detectable traces 
of radioactive tritium from the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in 
the Connecticut River."

	Has anyone ever found non-detectable traces of anything,
radioactive or not?

http://news.yahoo.com/radioactive-tritium-found-river-near-vermont-yanke
e-plant-184050307.html

Steven Dapra

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