Total tritium measurement in atmosphere

Measurement of tritium in the atmosphere is of strong interest wherever this radionuclide is used. Therefore, a method is proposed for the joint measurement of burnable tritium, independently from its physico-chemical form, and of tritiated water. The method consists of transforming the tritiated molecules of the gases present in the air volume into tritiated water by burning them together with a known quantity of hydrogen. The water vapor is condensed and added to a liquid scintillator. The scintillator is also able to dissolve conventional filters so that the tritium attached to particulate and concentrated on these filters can be jointly measured, as will be discussed in a future report. The overall detection limit of the method is approximately 64 Bq m-3 for a combustion period of 10 min (which corresponds to sampling an air volume of 15 L) and a counting period of 10 min. This limit, much lower than the derived air concentrations in the most unfavorable cases, allows the application of the method for safety purposes. Moreover, the method can be integrated into a general procedure for the measurement of tritium in different chemical forms, to be applied in case of necessity.