Position Paper on Practicable Performance Criteria for the Removal Efficiency of Volatile Radionuclides
As a result of fuel reprocessing, volatile radionuclides may be released from the facility stack if no processes are put in place to remove them. The radionuclides that are of concern in this document are 3H, 14C, 85Kr, and 129I. The question we attempted to answer is how efficient must this removal process be for each of these radionuclides? To answer this question, we examined the three regulations that may impact the degree to which these radionuclides must be reduced before process gases can be released from the facility. These regulations are 40 CFR 61 (EPA 2010a), 40 CFR 190(EPA 2010b), and 10 CFR 20 (NRC 2012). These regulations apply to the total radionuclide release and to a particular organ - the thyroid. Because these doses can be divided amongst all the radionuclides in different ways and even within the four radionuclides in question, we provided several cases. We first looked at the inventories for these radionuclides for three fuel types (PWR UOX, PWR MOX, and AHTGR), several burn-up values, and time out of reactor extending to 200 y. We calculated doses to the maximum exposed individual (MEI) with the EPA code CAP-88 (Rosnick 1992). Finally, we looked at two dose cases. Allocating all of the allowable dose to be used by the volatile radionuclides is one case, but, perhaps, unrealistic. In lieu of this, we arbitrarily selected a value of 10% of the allowable dose to be assigned to the volatile radionuclides. We calculated the required decontamination factors (DFs) for both of these cases, including the case for the thyroid dose for which 14C and 129I were the main contributors. With respect to 129I doses, we found that the highest dose was calculated with iodine as a fine particulate. The dose scaled as the fraction of the total 129I that was particulate. Therefore, we assumed for all of our calculations that 100% of the 129I was particulate and allow the user of the results given here to scale our calculated doses to their needs.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE - NE
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC07-05ID14517
- OSTI ID:
- 1046075
- Report Number(s):
- INL/EXT-12-25410; TRN: US1203747
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE WASTES, AND NON-RADIOACTIVE WASTES FROM NUCLEAR FACILITIES
DECONTAMINATION
EFFICIENCY
GASES
INVENTORIES
IODINE
ORGANS
PARTICULATES
PERFORMANCE
RADIOISOTOPES
REGULATIONS
REMOVAL
REPROCESSING
THYROID
US EPA
volatile radionuclides
gaseous fission products