Radioactive Liquid Waste

[Tylor]

I was reading through some articles today, and was just curious why when discussing the contribution to environmental concerns for radioactive liquid, do we "exclude tritium"? Is it because tritium is naturally occurring, therefore not an environmental concerns? Could it be that it emits very low energy radiation? I'm no expert on the subject of tritium, but I'd be interested to hear why we actually exclude the radiation contribution for tritium.

[61nomad]

I am not aware that tritium is excluded from environmental concerns.  There are limits for discharge of tritium and there are also limits for tritium in drinking water.  It is a pretty big problem if you have a plume of tritium under your licensed facility.

[Tylor]

Well when we talK about the sum of radiation released from radioactive liquid, literally everywhere I've looked says "excluding tritium" I knew we had limits on release of tritium, I believe there is a forum post just a few posts down from this one. It seems like it's in a separate category possibly, or maybe I'm misunderstanding the reason for that statement.

[61nomad]

If you have tritium in a pool of water, it won't stay there.  As the water evaporates, tritium will be in the water vapor.  There is no economical way to filter tritium liquid or gaseous effluent.  It is in a different category than other isotopes in that regard. 

[Tylor]

Thank you very much, I'm currently a student in the navy nuclear program and I was just trying to understand, it probably seemed like a pretty random question... Haven't ever really learned anything about tritium beyond the "excluding tritium" and I know it's H3..