Re: xenon behavior

["Michael P. Grissom" <mikeg@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

Assuming the rebreathers are set right and all dose loading is
done in fume hoods approved for the purpose, very little Xe-133 
will be lost to room air in a study.  Of course, if you have to 
provide for a "spill" with the loss of a 10 mCi dose into 
the room air space, the ventilation provided may require changes.

With room ventilation in normal mode (at another location), after
a "gas spill" I was able to track Xe-133 near floor level out
the door and down the center of the corridor.  The drift seemed
to be a pretty good indicator of the actual ventilation flow
pattern for the area.  One might say this served as a tracer
study of the building's ventilation mixing efficiency (or rather 
lack of same which in fact is true for most buildings with 
questionably balanced/distributed HVAC systems).

In a dead air space (such as a tent set up for calibrating a
Johnston's lab xenon detector or some such) there may be a
little stratification, but generally not much.

An observation from the past...

At 05:27 PM 11/2/95 -0600, you wrote:
>I have a question regarding the behaviour of xenon gas ...
-----------------------
Michael P. Grissom
mikeg@slac.stanford.edu
Phone:  (415) 926-2346
Fax:    (415) 926-3030