Tritium stack sampling

[Radoslav P Radev <rado@uclink2.berkeley.edu>]

Hi everybody,

I am a new reader and first time caller.
I would appreciated any help, hint, or information regarding simple and 
cheap method(s) of tritium gas stack sampling.

We will probably face the problem of tritium stack sampling in order to 
verify that our releases will be below the state limits.  We anticipate 
that the tritium will be mostly in a pure gas form (not tritiated water 
or organically bound tritium).  The expected daily releases are about 2-5 
microcuries; however, there would be incidental releases up to 5-50 
millicuries of tritium.  The air flow is 52,000 cfm. 

An idea was suggested to me: to pass some of the stack flow through a 
bubbler (a container with a some solution, e.g. sodium hydroxide) that 
will retain some of the tritium.  The bubbler may be run for some time 
(e.g. 24 hours) and then the solution with the trapped tritium may 
be counted in LSC. With simple calculations the tritium concentration in 
the air flow can be derived. 

Is this simple method feasible?  Is there any other not complicated ways 
for tritium grab sampling?  Is there any good literature that I could get 
my hands on?

Any comments and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Radoslav Radev

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Radoslav Radev
Office of Radiation Safety
UC Berkeley
e-mail: rado@ulcink2.berkeley.edu
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