Radiological Survey Of The Low Level Radioactive Waste Burial Site At The Palos Forest Preserve Illinois

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Download or read book Radiological Survey of the Low-level Radioactive Waste Burial Site at the Palos Forest Preserve, Illinois written by and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two landfill sites containing low-level radioactive waste material, Site A and Plot M, are located 14 miles southwest of Chicago, Illinois in the Palos Forest Preserve. Site A is the former location of the Argonne National Laboratory. Buried at Site A in 1956 were the dismantled reactor shells, building walls, and cooling towers from three of the world's first nuclear reactors. Plot M was used from 1943 to 1949 for burial of low-level radioactive wastes derived from Site A operations and from the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory. Tritiated water was detected in 1973 in some of the Forest Preserve picnic wells located 500 to 1000 yards north of Plot M. An extensive surveillance program was initiated in 1976 to: (1) study the elevated tritium content of some picnic wells and its observed seasonal fluctuations, (2) establish if other radionuclides buried in Plot M or remaining at Site A have migrated, (3) establish the rate of groundwater movement in the glacial till and underlying dolomite aquifer, (4) determine the tritium content of the till and aquifer, and (5) predict future tritium levels in the well water. Several test wells were installed in the soil and dolomite bedrock to monitor radioactivity in groundwater, measure water levels, and provide other geohydrological information. Tritium has migrated from the Plot M burial trenches into the surrounding drift. The tritium plume, the contaminated zone in the drift in which tritium concentrations exceed 10 nanocuries per liter of water (nCi/L), has migrated at least 165 feet horizontally northward and 130 feet vertically downward to the bedrock surface. Small amounts of other radionuclides - uranium, plutonium, and strontium-90 - have been found in boreholes beneath the concrete cap covering Plot M, but not in the subsoil outside of the Plot. The radionuclide concentrations found to date are too low to result in any measureable radiation exposure to the public.