Krypton-85 Hydrofracture Engineering Feasibility and Safety Evaluation

摘要

Engineering studies have been made to determine the hazards associated with the disposal of exp 85 Kr using the hydrofracture process. To assess the hazards, an effort has been made to identify the equipment required to entrain and dissolve the noble gas into the grout stream at hydrofracture pressure (up to 350 bar). Off-the-shelf or slightly modified equipment has been identified for safe and effective compression and gas-grout mixing. Each monthly injection disposes of 1.6 x 10 exp 6 Ci of exp 85 Kr. By connecting only one gas cylinder to the injection system at a time, the maximum amount of krypton likely to be released as a result of equipment failure is limited to 128,000 Ci. An evaluation by Los Alamos Technical Associates shows that releasing this amount of gas in less than one hour under worst-case meteorological conditions through a 30-m stack would result in a whole-body dose of 170 millirem at a distance of 1 km from the facility. A krypton collection and recovery system can further reduce this dose to 17 millirem; increasing the distance to the site boundary to 3 km can also reduce the dose by a factor of ten. Lung and skin dose estimates are 1.6 and 120 times the whole-body dose, respectively. These are all worst-case values; releases under more typical conditions would result in a significantly lower dose. No insurmountable safety or engineering problems have been identified. (ERA citation 06:028299)