TY - JOUR

T1 - Development of a Novel Passive Monitoring Technique to Showcase the 3D Distribution of Tritiated Water (HTO) Vapor in Indoor Air of a Nuclear Facility

AU - Feng, Bin

AU - Ibesich, Martin

AU - Hainz, Dieter

AU - Waidhofer, Daniel

AU - Veit-Öller, Monika

AU - Trunner, Clemens

AU - Stummer, Thomas

AU - Foster, Michaela

AU - Nemetz, Markus

AU - Welch, Jan M.

AU - Villa, Mario

AU - Sterba, Johannes H.

AU - Musilek, Andreas

AU - Renz, Franz

AU - Steinhauser, Georg

N1 - Funding Information: This work was supported by a start-up grant from TU Wien to G.S. We thank Bernd Hiegesberger from AGES for quality control measurements in a lab comparison. The authors appreciate the workshop led by Heinz Matusch for sampler construction and Gregor Zopf for his help during the study. B.F. especially thanks the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for the Postdoctoral Fellowship and Dr. Yining He (Ninth People’s Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine) for her assistance in statistical analysis. The authors acknowledge TU Wien Bibliothek for financial support through its Open Access Funding Programme.

PY - 2023/12/5

Y1 - 2023/12/5

N2 - Tritiated water (HTO), a ubiquitous byproduct of the nuclear industry, is a radioactive contaminant of major concern for environmental authorities. Although understanding spatiotemporal heterogeneity of airborne HTO vapor holds great importance for radiological safety as well as diagnosing a reactor’s status, comprehensive HTO distribution dynamics inside nuclear facilities has not been studied routinely yet due to a lack of appropriate monitoring techniques. For current systems, it is difficult to simultaneously achieve high representativeness, sensitivity, and spatial resolution. Here, we developed a passive monitoring scheme, including a newly designed passive sampler and a tailored analytical protocol for the first comprehensive 3D distribution characterization of HTO inside a nuclear reactor facility. The technique enables linear sampling in any environment at a one-day resolution and simultaneous preparation of hundreds of samples within 1 day. Validation experiments confirmed the method’s good metrological properties and sensitivity to the HTO’s spatial dynamics. The air in TU Wien’s reactor hall exhibits a range of 3H concentrations from 75-946 mBq m-3 in the entire 3D matrix. The HTO release rate estimated by the mass-balance model (3199 ± 306 Bq h-1) matches the theoretical calculation (2947 ± 254 Bq h-1), suggesting evaporation as the dominant HTO source in the hall. The proposed method provides reliable and quality-controlled 3D monitoring at low cost, which can be adopted not only for HTO and may also inspire monitoring schemes of other indoor pollutants.

AB - Tritiated water (HTO), a ubiquitous byproduct of the nuclear industry, is a radioactive contaminant of major concern for environmental authorities. Although understanding spatiotemporal heterogeneity of airborne HTO vapor holds great importance for radiological safety as well as diagnosing a reactor’s status, comprehensive HTO distribution dynamics inside nuclear facilities has not been studied routinely yet due to a lack of appropriate monitoring techniques. For current systems, it is difficult to simultaneously achieve high representativeness, sensitivity, and spatial resolution. Here, we developed a passive monitoring scheme, including a newly designed passive sampler and a tailored analytical protocol for the first comprehensive 3D distribution characterization of HTO inside a nuclear reactor facility. The technique enables linear sampling in any environment at a one-day resolution and simultaneous preparation of hundreds of samples within 1 day. Validation experiments confirmed the method’s good metrological properties and sensitivity to the HTO’s spatial dynamics. The air in TU Wien’s reactor hall exhibits a range of 3H concentrations from 75-946 mBq m-3 in the entire 3D matrix. The HTO release rate estimated by the mass-balance model (3199 ± 306 Bq h-1) matches the theoretical calculation (2947 ± 254 Bq h-1), suggesting evaporation as the dominant HTO source in the hall. The proposed method provides reliable and quality-controlled 3D monitoring at low cost, which can be adopted not only for HTO and may also inspire monitoring schemes of other indoor pollutants.

KW - 3D spatial distribution

KW - environmental radioactivity

KW - indoor air pollution

KW - nuclear industry

KW - passive sampler

KW - tritium

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85178614464&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1021/acs.est.3c05783

DO - 10.1021/acs.est.3c05783

M3 - Article

C2 - 37964532

AN - SCOPUS:85178614464

VL - 57

SP - 20024

EP - 20033

JO - Environmental Science and Technology

JF - Environmental Science and Technology

SN - 0013-936X

IS - 48

ER -