131I Discharges from an Operating Boiling Water Reactor Nuclear Power Station

Abstract

A series of radiological surveillance studies was conducted at Dresden hhclear Power Station by the Radiological Engineering Laboratory of the Division of Environmental Radiation which provided data on 1311 concentrations observed in the plant, the plant's effluent, and the environment. Based on the Dresden study data, an evaluation is made in this paper of the public health significance of1311 discharges from BM'R nuclear power plants. The in-plant barriers to the transport of 1311 through a BWR nuclear power plant to the site environs were found to function at a high efriciency. As a result, the critical phase of the environmental surveillance program for Dresden, a BWR without gaseous holdup, was concluded to be the sulimersion dose from noble gases, not 1311 in milk. For a BWR nuclear power plant employing gaseous holdup, it was concluded that the ingestion 1311 dose may be more limiting than the submersion dose from noble gases.