<< Previous

NRC Tritium Task Force Issues Report
In October 2006, the NRC released a report on findings of a group of experts from the NRC and the state of Illinois on unplanned releases of radioactive liquids. The task force found no impact on public health from these events, the NRC said.

“We looked at a wide range of releases that go back to 1996, and even included a substantial release from the Hatch plant in 1986, and none of these events led to appreciable radiation doses to people outside the plants,” said Stuart Richards, the NRC senior manager who led the task force.

The group provided 26 recommendations to the NRC. These include a recommendation that the NRC update its regulations on monitoring radioactive releases and the environment in and around a nuclear plant to take into account state-of-the art technologies and practices. The task force also recommended that the companies operating nuclear plants work with local and state agencies to report voluntarily any radioactive liquid releases that fall below the NRC threshold for reporting.   As noted above, the industry already has established such a voluntary reporting program.

Lessons Learned and Industry Guidance
In February 2007, the industry held a workshop with the NRC and other stakeholders to capture lessons learned from implementing the voluntary industry program. Following the workshop, the industry formed a task group to redraft industry guidance on the program to incorporate the lessons learned. The industry issued the final guidance—“Industry Ground Water Protection Initiative,” NEI 07-07— in August 2007. It is available to the public on the NRC Web site at www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/tritium/public-meetings.html (under the Sept. 27 public meeting)

Standards for Measuring Tritium
A standard unit for measuring the amount of radioactivity in the environment is the curie, named for Marie Curie. Government entities use smaller units in regulations to denote a fraction of a curie. The NRC uses microcuries, which is one-millionth of a curie. Other agencies use the smaller unit of a picocurie, which is one-trillionth of a curie.

For perspective, the amount of tritium in the groundwater at the nuclear power plant with the highest and most extensive levels of tritium is far less than the amount of tritium in a single exit sign. Many industrial-grade exit signs contain 10 to 20 curies of tritium gas. By comparison, the average concentration of tritium in groundwater at nuclear plants is at or below 20,000 picocuries per liter, the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard for tritium in drinking water.

1 curie = 1,000,000
Microcuries

1 microcurie = 1,000,000
picocuries

1 curie = 1,000,000,000,000 picocuries

Pages 1 2 3 4