Page 10—SUSQUEHANNA TIMES
Met Ed officials meet
with people at Maytown to discuss radioactive releases
[continued from front page]
spokesmen have suggested
that it might tend to settle in
low-lying, windless areas,
like people’s basements.
The Met Ed people
denied that this could
happen. Scientific evidence,
Met Ed operations chief
Robert Arnold said, shows
that krypton gas tends to
diffuse, rather than to flow
in- a dense, amorphous
mass.
FUTURE RELEASES
Met Ed may wish to make
several future releases of
radioactive material into the
environment, as part of the
continuing clean-up opera-
tion.
“We have a problem,”
Mr. Arnold said, ‘“‘and it
isn’t going to go away.”’
One reason why Met Ed
wants to vent the krypton
gas, Arnold said, is ‘‘so that
we can go -into the
containment building and
find out what conditions are ,
like inside. I can’t say yes or
no to more releases until we
know what the situation is.”’
Another Met Ed spokes-
man said, ‘‘No reactor has
ever been damaged the way
this one has. We don’t know
what we're going to find (in
the reactor). But the only
way we can proceed is one
step at a time.”
A possible
future krypton gas pollution
is the reactor fuel pins,
which may contain trapped
gas. If the gas is in there,
the company will want to
vent it.
source of
ONGOING CRISIS
Met Ed officials ex-
pressed some nervousness
about the current state of
affairs on Three Mile Island.
Mr. Arnold mentioned two
sources of possible danger:
the ‘‘mobility of fission
products’’ within the cooling
system might lead to their
eventual escape, he said. He
also said that ‘“‘we cannot
keep the containment
building at negative pres-
sure forever,’”’ which means
that, eventually, gases
within the building might
Met Ed’s case for venting the krypton
From Met Ed’s point of
view, the purpose of last
week's’ public meeting
between Met Ed officials
and local citizens was
twofold: The company
wanted to reassure people
about the health effects of
TMI's March accident. They
also wanted to gain public
support for their plan to vent
krypton gas into the air.
The gas cannot be vented
without NRC approval, and
it is possible that an
environmental impact study
Births
LARRY, (Bonita Ober), R3
Mount Joy, a son, at
General Hospital.
HAMMILL, Mrs. and Mrs.
James, (Nadine Shirk), 36 S.
Chestnut St., Marietta, a
daughter at Columbia Hos-
pital.
will have to be completed
before any venting is
allowed. Any venting before
next spring is considered
highly improbable.
In the interim, the NRC
and various anti-nuclear
groups will probably issue
criticisms of Met Ed’s plan.
We will try to report such
criticism as it becomes
available. :
In the meantime, we are
reprinting part of a paper by
Keith Woodard, consultant
to the Metropolitan Edison
Company, defendin the plan
MATIAS, Mr. and Mrs.
Jorge (Karin Berkheiser),
‘Mount Joy R3, a son at
General Hospital.
ZURIN, Mr. and Mrs.
Kenneth (Bernice Miller),
Mount Joy R3, a son at St.
Joseph Hospital.
Wittell Poem
THE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS
Born of the fear of man and his concern;
Blind to a law he could not understand,
Lest from the south his sun-god would not turn
To smile again upon the darkened land;
By dint of heathen prayer and rites unknown,
Intent some spirit power to invoke,
He. culled the greenliest of all things grown
From stands of cedar, hemlock, pine and oak.
If, haply, of his wont ye doubt, then say
What mean the colored balls on Christmas trees
If not fruit glorified?—a hint to lay
At the door of this most eld of mysteries.
‘What if by faith involved in later creed
Our ritual it sublimate today?
Leastwise intransigence to peace we cede
And cark and care are cleansed and washed away;
While grudge and bitterness—if such there be—
Rub bleary eyes to pause and look upon
The countenance of man who smiles to see
The miracle of a redeeming sun.
: Chester Wittell
to release the gas. The
exerpt from Mr. Woodard’s
paper follows:
With one exception, most
of the radioactive
decayed in the eight months
since the accident. The
exception is krypton-85
[Kr-8S5] which is a noble gas
with a long half-life;
therefore, it disappears by
decay very slowly. The
remaining Kr-85 constitutes
less than 1/1000 of the
original inventory of all
noble gases in the contain-
ment. shade de.
Since Kr-85 will not soon
decay, various studies have
been made to determine the
most feasible method for its
removal so that the recovery
effort imside the reactor
building can proceed. Our
job in this effort has been to
help compute the potential
additional radiation dose if
the krypton were to be
released in a controlled
manner to the atmosphere.
In the course of our studies,
we found that doses could
be minimized if releases
were controlled from hour-to
-hour based on continuously
updated information on the
dilution potential of the
atmosphere.
Many computer simula-
tions of this controlled
procedure were made using
historical weather data. We
determined that the ad-
ditional doses due to this
controlled release at the
location of the highest
exposure would be about 0.1
miilirem whole body and 5
millirem skin dose. To put
these doses in perspective,
one should consider dose
objectives required by the
NRC for the normal
operation of nuclear power
plants. The 0.1 millirem
whole body dose is 50 times
lower than the 5 millirem
NRC dose objective and the
skin dose of 5 millirem is
three times lower than the
15 millirem objective. The
poulation dose would be less
than one person-rem
throughout the 50 mile
radius around the site.
Table 1 compares the doses
due to controlled venting
with other radiation expo-
"1000 cubic feet per minute.
At this flow rate only a very
small fraction of the 2
million cubic feet of volume
inside the building is
released each hour. One to
two months will be required
to slowly release the gases.
On the way out the gas
will pass through a series of
filters to assure that only the
Kr-85 noble gas is released.
Radioactive content will be
monitored by two indepen-
dent sensors. A high
radiation signal will automa-
tically close the dampers.
The operators will use
readouts from a computer to
determine the proper re-
lease rate. The computer
updates this information
automatically each hour
based on automatic sam-
pling of measurements from
the meteorological tower.
All releases will be made
from the plant vent stack
that can be seen on the east
side of the reactor building.
Releases from this ele-
vated point help to minimize
doses because of the higher
elevation of the release.
Finally, radiation monitors
around the plant will be
used to confirm that very
low doses are indeed being
maintained in the environ-
ment.
escape in an uncontrolled
manner.
Controlled venting of the
gases now was therefore
‘“‘safer,”” Arnold said.
Another Met Ed spokes-
man privately told this
reporter that the circulating
system which now keeps the
damaged reactor cool
‘““‘won’t last forever. We
can't just seal the thing up
and forget. about it,”” he
added. ‘‘The core needs
constant attention. Other-
wise, there's a possibility
Tindicates wind toward north
December 19, 1979
2%:
-
N55.
a.
that part of it could. go
critical.”
In effect, the Met Ed
people were saying that a
speedy clean up operation is
necessary to insure that TMI
will not misbehave again;
. but also that a speedy clean
up will result in releases of
small amounts of radiation
into the environment.
‘‘Right now,’’ one Met Ed
official said, ‘‘people want
zero radiation from that
plant. And that may be
impossible."’
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This chart shows the relationship between time, wind
direction, and amount of radiation released from TMI
last March.
Date and time of day are indicated across the bottom
of the chart.
The arrows represent wind speed and direction. An
arrow pointing up indicates wind blowing toward the
north. South is down, left is east, and right is west, as in
a conventional map. Each bar on an arrow indicates 3
miles per hour of wind speed.
DATE
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release
chart. |
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