Analysis of the time dependence of the tritium concentration in the Embalse Rio Tercero lake

In natural uranium and heavy water reactors, tritium is produced mainly as the activation product of the deuterium in the moderator and cooling medium. About 75% of the liquid effluents discharged by nuclear power plants in Argentina correspond to tritium. In the case of the Embalse nuclear power plant, the liquid effluents are discharged into the Rio Tercero reservoir. As its water is used for drinking, 98% of the dose received by the critical group is due to these discharges. A simple mathematical model was developed which predicts the variation in the tritium concentration in the reservoir. It is a complete mixture type model and the entry parameters are the lake volume, entrance volume and discharge volume. The model was solved by means of a Runge-Kutta method of second order. The chosen method is a modified Euler. A good correlation is observed when the values obtained by means of the numeric resolution of the developed model are compared with the values obtained by the tritium measurement made during the 1996 and 1997 environmental monitoring program. (author)