Re: Cooling Tower Radioactivity

[MortGold@aol.com]

Sorry to have missed your first posting, but I just caught up with it (or
vice versa).  As a relic of the "middle ages" of nuclear energy, I am quite
familiar with at least one source of radionuclides in cooling towers -- the
fallout of the period between 1951 and the end of the testing program in the
mid-to-late 60s.   The towers are very effective scrubbers of the air volumes
induced or forced through the towers to remove heat, and it was very common
to find the radionuclides removed from the air to build up quite significant
concentrations in the recirculated water as a result of the
evaporative cooling process.   It was not unusual at some NPPs using cooling
towers during the weapons testing period for blowdown monitors to alarm due
to the scrubbed-out fallout.  

The wood fill commonly used in early cooling towers would absorb the water
and its dissolved constituents - the latter remaining in the wood as the
water evaporated over time.    If I had to guess, I would finger Sr-90/Cs-137
as the likely nuclides..

Mort Goldman (MortGold@AOL.com)

I am responsible for my remarks - since I have no boss but me



----
>>> "Engelbretson, David" <DEngelbretson@tmh.tmc.edu>
08/12/97 14:29 >>>
>Dear colleagues,

>I recently had a question asked by a member of the
>hazardous waste team at our facility that I did not know the
>answer to and was wondering if anyone could help me.

>He told me that a waste hauler friend of his had dismantled
>an old water cooling tower (~40 yrs old) from the top of an
>office building and had attempted to take it to a landfill.  The
>tower material  was rejected because it was emitting radiation
>above the landfill's acceptable limits.

>Would anyone know how radioactivity could have ended up in
>the tower materials and what radionuclides could be present?
> From what I was told most of the material was wood.  Thank
>you in advance for your assistance.