Particles released from reactors

Skin protection may necessitate use of full protective suits. When catalysts are dumped from reactors at the end of a process they may prove to be extremely dusty as a result of reduction in particle size during the reaction process. Again, depending upon the nature of the hazard, ventilation, personal protection, and use of temporary enclosures to prevent contamination of the general work area should be considered. Some catalysts are pyrophoric and some catalyst beds are inerted with the added possibility of fire, or release of inerting gas into the workplace which may cause asphyxiation. 

While nuclear power plants use multiple layers of protection from the radioactive particles inside the reactor core, a serious accident can cause the release of radioactive material into the environment. It is not a nuclear explosion, because the uranium fuel used in a nuclear power plant does not contain a high enough concentration of U-235. For an explosion to occur, the uranium fuel inside the reactor would have to be enriched to about 90% U-235, but it is only enriched to about 3.5%. 

Concern about fission-product release from coated reactor fuel particles and fission-product sorption by fallout particles has provided stimulus to understand diffusion. In a fallout program mathematics of diffusion with simple boundary conditions have been used as a basis for (1) an experimental method of determining diffusion coefficients of volatile solutes and (2) a calculational method for estimating diffusion profiles with time dependent sources and. time dependent diffusion coefficients. The latter method has been used to estimate the distribution of fission products in fallout. In a fission-product release program, a numerical model which calculates diffusion profiles in multi-coated spherical particles has been programmed, and a parametric study based on coating and kernel properties has provided an understanding of fission product release. 

To evaluate fission product release in a reactor, it is necessary to supply the appropriate particle geometry, diffusion coefficients, and distribution coefficients. This is a formidable task. To approach this problem, postirradiation fission product release has been studied as a function of temperature. The results of these studies are complex and require considerable interpretation. The SLIDER code without a source term has proved to be of considerable value in this interpretation. Parametric studies have been made of the integrated release of fission products, initially wholly in the fueled region, as a function of the diffusion coefficients and the distribution coefficients. These studies have led to observations of critical features in describing integrated fission product releases. From experimental values associated with these critical features, it is possible to evaluate at least partially diffusion coefficients and distribution coefficients. These experimental values may then be put back into SLIDER with appropriate birth and decay rates to evaluate inreactor particle fission product releases. Figure 11 is a representation of SLIDER simulation of a simplified postirradiation fission product release experiment. Calculations have been made with the following pertinent input data ... 

The Chernobyl accident involved the largest short-term release from a single source of radioactive materials to the atmosphere ever recorded. Of the materials released from the reactor core, four elements have dominated the short-term and long-term radiological situation in the affected areas of the USSR iodine (primarily caesium ( Cs, Cs), strontium (primarily Sr) and plutonium ( Pu, " Pu). In addition, highly radioactive fuel fragments (hot particles) were released. 

The terrestrial component of the dust particles embedded in the ice consists of volcanic ash, finegrained dust derived from soil on the continents, carbon particles released by forest fires, biogenic particles (e.g., the skeletons of diatoms, seeds, and pollen grains), aerosol particles of atmospheric origin, including sea-spray particles that nucleate snow flakes (Section 17.10). In addition, the uppermost layer of snow and fim that was deposited after the start of the Industrial Revolution (i.e., post ad 1850) contains anthropogenic detritus such as flakes of metal, paint, and plastics, fly-ash particles and other combustion products, fibers (composed of wood, cotton, and synthetics), industrial contaminants (e.g., lead), and radioactive nuchdes released by the testing of nuclear weapons and by the operation of nuclear reactors (Faure et al. 1997). 

In the case when defective fuel rods are present in the reactor core, the BWR reactor water contains the other fission products and the activation products released from the fuel in concentrations well below those of fission product iodine. This applies as well for fission product cesium, which is retained on the ion exchangers of the reactor water cleanup system with a decontamination factor of about 100. As far as it is known, cesium in the reactor water is present as the Cs ion, whereas large proportions of most of the polyvalent fission products and of the actinides are attached to the corrosion product particles suspended in the water as yet, there is no detailed knowledge on the chemical state of these elements (i. e., adsorbed to the surfaces or incorporated into the Fe203 lattice). It was reported that the strontium isotopes as well as Np appear in the reactor water in the dissolved cationic state, while Tc was found in the reactor water as a dissolved anionic species, most likely Tc04 (Lin and Holloway, 1972). According to James (1988), discrete fuel particles were not detected in the BWR reactor water. 

In the Cora code, the corrosion product layers outside the reactor core are rather arbitrarily subdivided into two layers, a transient one and a permanently deposited one. Supply to the transient layer occurs via deposition of suspended particles from the coolant, release from it includes erosion of particles back to the coolant as well as transport into the permanently deposited layer and partial conversion into dissolved species. In a comparable manner, the supply of nuclides to the permanent layer is assumed to result from transfer from the transient layer and the exchange equilibrium with the dissolved species present in the coolant. The deposition coefficients of suspended solids can be calculated on the basis of particle size and flow characteristics. The coefficients of relevance for the permanently deposited layer, including ionic transfer mechanisms between liquid and solid phases, can be derived from theoretical considerations as well as from laboratory studies of corrosion product solubilities. Finally, diffusion rates of nuclides at the interphase layers are needed, from the oxide layer to the coolant as well as in the reverse direction. These data can be obtained in part by theoretical considerations and by measurements at the plants. 

The radionuclides incorporated in the oxide layer are in part released again to the coolant in a manner very similar to the release of corrosion products from corroding stainless steel. The exact mechanism of release is not certain, but it may be a combination of dissolution, diffusion, ion exchange and desorption or spalling of smaller oxide particles. The overall time constants for the Co activity release from the inner and the outer layer oxides were empirically determined from a number of reactors to be about 2 10 d and 8.6 10 d, respectively (Lin, 1990). 

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