White Paper on Carbon-14 Testing in Environmental Air Samples

GEL Laboratories, LLC and GEL Engineering, LLC have developed new and improved methods to better identify C-14 in the various chemical forms released from nuclear reactors and fuel reprocessing facilities.

To completely understand the environmental releases and impact to the public, a two-step approach was selected. The first step was to develop a sampling method that would enable an accurate assessment of the ratio of Carbon-14 discharged as carbon dioxide compared to organic gases like methane.  This is very important to dose modeling calculations to members of the public. Once this ratio was understood, the second step was to develop a method to track inorganic forms of C-14 with standard environmental air monitoring equipment and achieve a detection limit that was in line with NRC 10CFR Appendix I dose modeling requirements.

GEL’s development efforts focused on using a solid sample cartridge that would fit into standard air sampling equipment used at nuclear plants.  The cartridge and sorbent needed to be capable of running 7 days at 24 hours
per day and not saturate with stable carbon dioxide.  The process developed for analyzing the sorbent involves chemically removing the carbon dioxide and ultimately counting by liquid scintillation counting.  The method yields a detection limit for C-14 of 200 Bq/m3 which provides a dose calculation of approximately 100 uSv/yr when applied to the child model.   A white paper was written that describes the methods and results used to determine the percent ratio of C-14 in inorganic and organic forms as well as field environmental monitoring for C-14 using GEL cartridges also known as “GELsorb C14”.

For more information, contact Bob Wills, Account Manager, at robert.wills@gel .com or (843) 906-5929.