Tritium instrumentation for environmental and occupational monitoring

The aim of this review is to provide an overview of the techniques which have been dev~loped for measuring tritium in various media.The main emphasis is on measurements for surveillance and protection in environmental and occupational situations.Tritium measurements in specialized research applications are not treated in detail.Overviews are first provided of the physical characteristics of tritium; of the sources of and typical levels of tritium concentrationa in the natural environment; and of the radiation protection guides.The various measurement techniques are then discussed.'. j ~ Tritium appears predominantly .astritiated water (HTO), and to a lesser extent as hydrogen gas (HT).With the use of Zircaloy-clad fuel rods in light-water reactors, tritium diffusion from the spent fuel should be ( ; .' .' very small(::; 1o/o ), ''so that most of the release .occursat the fuel rep.rocessing plarit.( 4).With the increasing number of nuclea.r,powerpla~ts, the world-wide inventory of tritium is expected to rise dramatically.One p~::ojection is shown in Figure 1 (from Ref. 1).Tritium is also produced at heavy-water reactors and at tritium production facilities, at which its relative importance is generally greater than that of all other radionuclide hazards combined.( 4 )