Locus Technologies (Locus) and Overhoff Technology have partnered to offer a complete Tritium monitoring software for the nuclear industry using Overhoff's Tritium instrumentation and Locus' Cloud Computing software.
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said that roughly 30 of the nation’s 104 reactor units have experienced Tritium leaks. According to the NRC, none of the leaks have impacted public health or safety but, the unmonitored and unexpected releases have raised concerns within the industry and among watchdog groups nationwide.
Similar concerns regarding leaks at several plants in the mid 2000’s prompted the members of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) to put forth a Ground Water Protection Initiative (NEI-07-07) in 2007.
This initiative identifies actions that utilities can take to improve their management and response to instances where the inadvertent release of radioactive substances may result in low but detectible levels of plant-related materials in subsurface soils and water, even when these are well below the NRC limits pertaining to the protection of public health and safety.
One of the key actions that adoptees of the initiative are expected to undertake is the establishment of an on-site groundwater monitoring program involving on site monitoring or regular sampling and analyzes to ensure the timely detection of inadvertent radiological releases.
According to the NRC, additional requirements pertaining to the monitoring of air releases of Tritium and Carbon-14 are likely to be promulgated in the future. To meet these requirements, new monitoring instruments and data management tools will have to be installed since many facilities are still using over 30-year old stack monitors and few, if any currently have H-3 or C-14 stack monitors in place.
For those nuclear facilities wanting to fulfill their responsibility under existing (eg, 10CFR-51 and 10CFR-52) as well as likely forthcoming regulations, the Locus/TA Overhoff offering provides a complete system for Tritium monitoring. TA-Overhoff recently unveiled the new, CAM-TC and CAM-TCI series monitors.
The model CAM-TC is a full-service, stack monitor that reads, analyzes and records Beta-Gamma Particulates, Iodine, Noble Gases, C-14, Tritium and optionally, Alpha Particulates.
The data captured by the CAM-TC monitors is immediately passed to Locus’s EIM where it is managed and integrated with groundwater and other monitoring data. Within EIM, graphs can be plotted, reports generated, maps can be produced and statistical analyzes performed, TA-Overhoff said.