Improved Capabilities for Area Environmental Monitoring at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Recent increased concern for environmental safety hazards resulting from releases of radioactivity and other hazardous materials have necessitated the installation of improved monitoring instruments and methods at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Over the past several years a number of important instrument projects have been initiated to improve plant monitoring systems (both inside the Laboratory and in adjacent East Tennessee areas) and to enhance operational capabilities for detecting releases of hazardous and/or radioactive materials. These measures will significantly modernize and increase the number of monitoring stations measuring activity levels in (1) plant effluent gases, (2) plant effluent liquid wastes, and (3) local streams and rivers. Monitoring instruments within the operating buildings of the Laboratory are being upgraded, and three instrumented meteorological towers are in service to provide information for calculating deposition patterns over surrounding areas. Advanced, on-line central data collection system, supply continuous information for programmable alarm-level circuits, for display at remote terminals throughout ORNL, and for scientific long-term data base purposes. When these improvements are completed in about two years, the number of environmentally derived signals will significantly exceed 750 monitored values.