The Canadian HT dispersion experiment at Chalk River - June 1987

A trace amount (3.54TBq) of tritiated hydrogen, HT, was released to the atmosphere at an experimental field at the Chalk River Laboratories on June 10, 1987 in order to study the environmental behaviour of HT. Experimental results showed that direct oxidation of HT in the atmosphere was small and confirmed that surface soils convert atmospheric HT to HTO. The HTO formed in the soil was slowly emitted to the atmosphere giving rise to the small concentrations of HTO observed in the air during the release and for a period of several weeks thereafter. HTO/HT ratios in air during the plume passage increased with downwind distance from a value of order 10-5 at 5 m to values between 4 x 10-4 and 8 x 10-4 at 400 m. Deposition velocities for HT to soil were in the range 10-4 to 10-3 m s-1. Rates of reemission of tritium from the soil to the atmosphere were typically a few percent per hour within one to two days of the release, declining to less than one percent per hour over two weeks. Tritium deposition velocities and reemission rates determined for soils in the field agreed well with laboratory measurements on field samples, and were similar in range to previous exposure chamber experiments carried out in various countries in the laboratory and field under non-winter conditions. Direct uptake of HT by vegetation was not detected. The time history of vegetation tritium was consistent with uptake of HTO from soil and atmosphere and with incorporation of tritium into the organically bound form through photosynthesis. The experiment provides an extensive data base suitable for the detailed evaluation of mathematical models describing the short range dispersion of tritium. The results indicate that the short range dose from a release of HT would be much less than the dose from an equivalent release of HTO