Historical Doses from Tritiated Water and Tritiated Hydrogen Gas Released to the Atmosphere from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). Part 4. Routine Releases, 1953 - 1972
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was founded in September 1952. By 1953, operations involving tritium were underway. Annual doses to an adult, a child (age 10), and an infant (age six months to one year) from tritium released routinely from the Livermore site between 1953 and 1972 were calculated using the tritium dose model, DCART. Uncertainties about sources and release rates are high, particularly for the 1950's, and it was difficult, and sometimes impossible (e.g., when a source was only assumed to have existed) to quantify them accurately. Because of this, every effort was made to assure that the uncertainties applied to the input parameters used in DCART would result in doses that could not have been exceeded. Doses were calculated at the potential locations of the hypothetical site-wide maximally exposed individual (SWMEI), which were at a residence on Vasco Road inside the present west perimeter of the Laboratory (1953 - 1958), at an automotive garage on East Avenue (1961), and at the Discovery Center (1959, 1960, 1962 - 1972, years which predate the facility). Even with the most conservative, screening model assumptions, the highest dose to the SW-MEI (in 1957) was predicted with 95% probability to have been between 27 and 370 {micro}Sv (2.7 and 37 mrem), with the most likely dose being 130 {micro}Sv (13 mrem). Using more realistic, but still conservative assumptions about what fraction of the diet could have been contaminated, these predictions were reduced by more than a factor of two. All other annual doses (at the 97.5% confidence limits) to the SW-MEI, calculated with the most conservative and health protective assumptions, were less than 200 {micro}Sv (20 mrem), and no dose after 1958 could have exceeded 100 {micro}Sv (10 mren). The cumulative dose to the hypothetical individual at the west perimeter location for 1953 through 1972 would have been no greater than 860 {micro}Sv (83 mrem), while the dose to the individual born and raised there would not have exceeded 1300 {micro}Sv (130 mrem) from routine releases of tritium. Cumulative doses at the location of the Discovery Center were less than half of these values.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 917891
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-TR-234644; TRN: US0805177
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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