Outdoor field evaluation of passive tritiated water vapor samplers at Canadian power reactor sites.

Tritium is one of several radioactive nuclides routinely monitored in and around CANDU (CANada Deuterium Uranium) power reactor facilities. Over the last ten years, passive samplers have replaced active sampling devices for sampling tritiated water vapor in the workplace at many CANDU stations. The potential of passive samplers for outdoor monitoring has also been realized. This paper presents the results of a 1-y field trial carried out at all five Canadian CANDU reactor sites. The results indicate that passive samplers can be used at most sampling locations to measure tritiated water vapor in air concentrations as low as 1 Bq m-3 over a 30-d sampling period. Only in one of the five sampling locations was poor agreement observed between active and passive monitoring data. This location, however, was very windy and it is suspected that the gusty winds were the source of the discrepancies observed.