The Department of Energy (DOE) has expressed a need for an on-line, real-time instrument for assaying alpha-emitting radionuclides (uranium and the transuranics) in effluent waters leaving DOE sites to ensure compliance with regulatory limits. Due to the short range of alpha particles in water ({approximately}40 Tm), it is necessary now to intermittently collect samples of water and send them to a central laboratory for analysis. A lengthy and costly procedure is used to separate and measure the radionuclides from each sample. Large variations in radionuclide concentrations in the water may go undetected due to the sporadic sampling. Even when detected, the reading may not be representative of the actual stream concentration. To address these issues, Tecogen, a division of Thermo Power Corporation, a Thermo Electron company, is developing a real-time, field-deployable, alpha monitor based on a solid-state silicon wafer semiconductor (patent pending, to be assigned to the Department of Energy). The Thermo Alpha Monitor (TAM) will serve to monitor effluent water streams (Subsurface Contaminants Focus Area) and will be suitable for process control of remediation as well as decontamination and decommissioning operations, such as monitoring scrubber or rinse water radioactivity levels (Mixed Waste Focus Area and D&D Focus Area). It would be applicable for assaying other liquids, such as oil, or solids after proper preconditioning. Rapid isotopic alpha air monitoring is also possible using this technology. This instrument for direct counting of alpha-emitters in aqueous streams is presently being developed by Thermo Power under a development program funded by the DOE Environmental Management program (DOE-EM), administered by the Morgantown Energy Technology Center (METC). Under this contract, Thermo Power has demonstrated a solid-state, silicon-based semiconductor instrument, which uses a proprietary film-based collection system to quantitatively extract the radionuclides of interest from the water sample. The new instrument permits extremely sensitive counting of alpha-emitters in water, and it also provides high-resolution alpha spectrometry so that individual radionuclides can be identified and assayed simultaneously, based on their different alpha energies. The specialized film captures a broad (or narrow by choice of film) range of alpha-emitting radionuclide ions dissolved in the liquid. The radionuclides are captured on or near the film's surface, forming a very thin source for high resolution spectrometry.
