Chernobly and Air Sampling

[VERNIG.PETER@FORUM.VA.GOV]

Well since the consensus seems to be that war stories are worth
putting out, I'll share this one.  I was the Reactor HP at the
Berkekley Research REactor, at U.C. Berkeley when Chernobyl had
it's operational problems that became so well known.  For days on
the news I watched the computer projections of the clowd wondering
if it would show up on our air samplers.  I had been told that a
couple of the Chinese tests had shown up.  After about a week the
clowd kind of reversed directions and I thought that's it, it'll
disperse so much I'll never see it.   WRONG!  About 2 weeks after
the event, when I collected the weekly air sampling filters we had
from undreds to thousands of cpm on all of the inside ones.  The 
air was pulled in from outside without filtration and went through
a bank of HEPA filters in the main exhaust line.  There was an auxiliary
line or three, one of which also came up hot.  Turned out the exhaust
for the fume hood air line was not filtered.  The line consisted of
two 6 inch ducts down the sides of the reactor lab and filters were
supposed to be added between a hood and the line.  No fume hoods were
installed and the vents, about one every 10 feet were not all closed.
 
So we actually learned about a shortcoming from the Chernobyl fallout
{It's an ill wind...etc.}  We also put the filters into an intrinsic
germanium detector with some software called RAYGUN, that came out of
LASL and IDed 7 or 8 of the fission fragment isotopes.  Had lots of
fun!
 
Peter G. Vernig, VA Medical Center, Denver, vernig.peter@forum.va.gov