Hanford Atmospheric Dispersion Data: 1960 Through June 1967

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This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an r w w of the Unit4 State Government. Neither the United State Government nor any WenCy thereof. or any of therr employees. makes any warranty, expressed or implicd. or assumes any lcgal liability of responsibiiity for any third party's use, or the results of such use, Of aW information. apwratus. product or process disclosed in this report. or rcprescnts that i t s use by such third pany would 1 not infringe privately owned rights. Availability of Ref m ce Materials Cited in NRC Publicatiorn Most documents cited in N RC publiotiom will be available from OM of t h ~f o l l d n g sour-: 1. The NRC Public Document Room. 1717 H Sacat. N.W. 2. The N RCIGPO Sales Program, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 3. The National Technical Information Service, Springfidd, VA 22161 Although the listing that follow, represents the majority of documem cited in NRC publications. it is not intended t o be exhaustive. Referenced documents available for inspcction and copying for a f e from the NRC Public DOCUment Room include NRC correspondenceand ifitml NRC memorand; NRC Office of lmpcction 'and Enforcement bulletins, circulars. information notice, inswction and invaigrtion notic-; Lice n wE vm Reports; vendor repons and correspondence; Commision papcrr; and appliunt and licensee documents and correspondence. The following documcnn in the NUREG series are available for p y n h from the NRC/GPO bla Program: formal NRC mff and contramor repom, NACspomrcd confermce procccdingr, and NRC bookleo and brochum. Also available are Regulatory Guida, NRC rcgulstioru in the COdC of Federal Regdationt, and Nuclear Regularory Commission Isurnas Documents available from the National Technical Information Smim include NUREG swia repons and technical repons prepared by other federal agencia and npom pre-rd by the Atomic Energy Commission, forerunner agency t o the Nuclear Regulatory Commirtron. Documents available from public and special technical libnria include all open IitNatun items. such as books, journal and periodical anicles, and tremactiont. Fcded Rsgifnr noticn, fcdml and state legislation, and congressional re porn can usually be ob t aid from these libraries. Documents such as theses, dissertations. forelgn mrtt and tramlatiom. and non-NRC Conference proceeding are available for purchase from the orqaniratlon rponwring the publication citcd. Single copies of N R C draft reports are available free upon wrinm request to the Division of Technical Information and Document Control, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commizrion, Washington, DC Copies of industry codes and standards used in a substantive manner in the NRC ragulatory are mainrained at the NRC Library, 7920 Norfolk Avenue, Bethesda. Maryland. and are available there for reference use b y the public. &des and standards are.usually copyrighted and may be purchased from the originating organizalion or. if they are Amencan National Standards, from the American National Standards Institute. 1430 Broadway, New York, NY 10018.

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Manuscript Completed: October 1983 Date Published: November 1983 Division of Health, Siting and Waste Management Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

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Our ability to prepare this data volume i s due almost entirely t o the efforts of the senior author, Paul W . Nickola. He was involved in the development of the experimental methods that made i t possible t o collect and assay the large number of samples affordably; he was involved in the f i e l d work during the experiments and in the assay of the samples; he collected and preserved the original data logs t h a t were used in compilation of this volume, and he worked t o have the data published so that others could benefit from them. Unfortunately, Paul isn ' t here to receive the credit that is due him. Work on this data volume was begun before Paul's death in August 1982. He had organized the original data records a n d collected supporting documentation. To these, he had added comments t h a t reflected his personal recollections on and insight t o the experiments. Finally , he had begun t o prepare the data for publication. This data volume follows the example he set in the Hanford 67-Series data volume We, the remaining authors, hope that our efforts in completing the d a t a volume have been adequate in comparison with his. included all of the data that he assembled along with his annotations. In doing this, we may have included data that he would have excluded, and certainly, we have not been able t o make further annotations as he

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The data reported in this volume were collected i n research programs funded by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission from 1960 through 1967. T h e authors wish t o thank the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Health and Environmental Research for making the data available for publication, and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission f o r making the Abbey o f the Earth Sciences Branch o f the Division of Health, Siting and Waste Management, was instrumental in the identification of the potential application o f these data t o the NRC's needs i n estimating diffusion and transport of nuclear power plant effluents under normal operating conditions and in the event of an emergency. His contribution i s gratefully acknowledged.

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This volume presents dispersion and supporting meteorological data from experiments conducted over relatively flat terraSn a t Hanford, Washington from January 1960 through June 1967. The nature o f the experiments, the sampling grids, and the tracer techniques used are described in the narrative portion of the document. tain the time-integrated concentrations for samplers within the plumes, summaries o f the concentration distributions across the plumes, and wind and temperature profile data for each release period.

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A large number of diffusion experiments were conducted on the Hanford diffusion grid from 1959 through 1974. These experiments involved surface and elevated re1 eases o f one or more tracers. Samples were collected near ground-level (1.5 m ) a t distances between 100 and 25,600 m and on towers t o distan'ces of 3200 m . This report contains the diffusion and supporting meteorological data for 134 releases made from 1960 through June 1967. Itis anticipated that these data are pertinent t o many current areas of research, despite their age. Data for most o f the other Hanford experiments have been published i n previous data volumes. essentially all of the conventional diffusion data obtained in Hanford experiments through 1974 have been made available. With the publication o f this volume,

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THE HANFORD DISPERSION EXPERIMENTS ............... THE FIELD GRID......................... ZINC SULFIDE FLUORESCENT PARTICLES............ DESCRIPTION OF THE DATA .................... THE APPENDIX A DIFFUSION DATA ...............

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Diffusion test chronology ................6 View looking south along arc 1600 m from S-source ....8 Aircraft view of near-source arcs on Hanford Aircraft view showi-ng sampling arcs t o distances Insecticide sprayers used i n dispensina ZnS and The diffusion grids superimposed on a contour mao .... 12 Assembled Rankin counter (right) and disassembled Rankin counter (left)with several field filter assemblies in place for assay ............. 18 number of fluorescein and rhodamine releases ......5 General grid, source, release and meteorological

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A large number of diffusion experiments were conducted on the Hanford diffusion grid from 1959 through 1974. surface a n d elevated releases of one or more tracers. collected near ground-level ( 1 . 5 m ) a t distances between 100 and 25,600 rn and on towers t o distances o f 3200 m . the diffusion and supporting meteorological data for 134 re1 eases made from 1960 through June 1967. pertinent t o many current areas of research, despite their age. f o r most of the other Hanford experiments have been published in previous data volumes. essentially all of the conventional diffusion data obtained in Hanford experiments through 1974 have been made available. The data volume i s organized as follows: describes the Hanford experiments, the sampling grid, the tracers, tracer dispersal techniques, and sampl e co11 ection and assay. The narrative section i s followed by three appendices that contain the diffusion and supporting meteorological data. Appendix A contains the diffusion data for each o f the experiments. The information height, time-of-day, tracer, amount released and wind speed; the normalized time-integrated concentrations (exposures) f o r each sampl i ng position, and the crosswind integrated exposures for the ground-level samplers a t each distance. derived from the d a t a . These estimates include the mean, standard deviation and coefficients of skewness a n d kurtosis o f the crosswind concentration distributions, the three highest exposures a t each distance, a n d the crosswind integrated exposures for each distance. Finally , Appendix C contains the supporting meteorological data for the experiments. These d a t a include vertical profiles of temperature, wind speed, wind direction a n d standard deviation o f the wind direction f o r each release period. These experiments involved This report contains Itis anticipated that these data are With the publication of this volume, A narrative section briefly a descri ? t i on of the experiment by re1 ease Appendix B contains diffusion estimates

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THE HANFORD DIFFUSION EXPERIMENTS The Hanford diffusion experiments have been assigned identifying names o r codes, The names are associated with groups of experiments having simi 1ar objectives and experimental designs. The first, and best known group of experiments, was Green Glow. experiments were conducted d u r i n g the summer of 1959 and consisted of 28 releases o f fluorescent pigment (ZnS) near ground-level during nighttime , stabl e atmospheri c conditions , The data for the Green G 1 ow experiments have been published by Barad and Fuquay (1962a and 1 9 6 2 b ) . The Hanford 30 series experiments from 1960 through 1962 followed the Green Glow design except t h a t they were conducted during neutral and unstable atmospheric conditions. Series, giving a total of 70 ground-level releases in the combination of the Green Glow and 30 Series. presented a summary of the d a t a from the best of the Green Glow and data. Data for8of the tests are missing. There were 42 releases in the 30 Fuquay, Simpson and Hinds (1964) This volume contains the available 30 Series The U Series experiments were started in 1960 and continued through elevated release points. This i s the largest group of Hanford experiducted under neutral and unstabl e atmospheric conditions y and the 1 a s t 37 were conducted under stable conditions. The number of tracer releases in the U Series was larger t h a n the number of experiments because, starting attest U 40, each experiment involved the simultaneous release of ZnS and fluorescein a t different heights. Nickola (1977) presents the data for experiments U-56 through U-92; the data for experiments U - 2 and U-5 through U-55 are contained in this volume. Prior t o changing the U Series emphasis from neutral and unstable atmospheric conditions t o stabl e atmospheric conditions preliminary experiments were conducted. These were the '63 and '64 Series experiments. In a l l , there were 33 experiments in these two series. This volume contains the data for the '63 and '64 Series experiments with the exception of '63-2 and '64-3. These experiments departed from the Green Glow design by using Of the 92 experiments i n the U Series, the first 53 were contwo sets of The last two major experimental series a t Hanford were krypton-85 releases t h a t occurred between 1967 and 1974 and the V Series experiments in 1972 and 1973. The krypton-85 experiments consisted of 19 puff and continuous releases near ground-level. They provide d a t a on the temporal variations of concentration as we1 1 as time-integrated concentrations. During the early experiments in t h i s series the sampling was conducted along the 209 and 800 m sampling arcs used initially in the Green Glow experiments. During the later krypton

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experiments, special sampling grids were used when low w i n d diffusion measurements were being made. Data for the initial krypton-85 experiments are published i n Nickola, Ramsdell and Ludwick (1970), and timeintegrated d a t a for these experiments are also contained in Nickola The eight V Series experiments were conducted t o evaluate the depletion of particulate plumes by deposition. multiple tracer releases from a height of 26 m . ZnS, rhodamine dye, and krypton-85. Concentration measurements were made on towers and a t ground-level. are contained in Nickola ( 1 9 7 7 ) . The experiments consisted of The data for these experiments The tracers used were I n addition t o the seven experimental series just mentioned, there were many other releases on the Hanford diffusion g r i d and a t other locations on the Hanford s i t e . Some of these releases have been combined i n t o seven secondary series . These secondary experimental series were generally related t o development o f new tracer techniques. appropriate, previously unpublished data f o r these secondary series have been included.in this volume. The MT Series of 4 releases from 1962 through 1964 was related t o the in 1967 carried the multiple tracer technique development further by providing data for evaluation of simultaneous releases from a common source. Data f o r the D Series experiments were published by Nickola (1977). Data for the last three MT experiments are included in this volume. This volume also contains the d a t a from the single Z experiment conducted in 1962. Four X Series releases in 1964 were made t o evaluate trichloroethane as a carrier f o r use in dispersing ZnS particles i n place of water. The data for two of these releases are included i n this data volume. Two series of tests have been given an A designator. occurred i n 1964 and 1965, and the second i n 1966 and 1967. Both sets of releases were made to test a real-time sampler for ZnS and t o evaluate use of the sampler i n moving vehicles and aircraft. level fixed samplers were activated f o r some of these releases. Available data from the fixed samplers for these experiments have been included in this data volume. The first A Series In 1965, there were five multiple tracer experiments i n which xenon-133 was one of the tracers. These experiments, known collectivEly as t h e Xenon Series, were t o evaluate xenon for use as a non-depositing tracer i n studying the dry deposition of ZnS and fluorescein. tracers i n these experiments were ZnS and fluorescein. Data for all of these experiments are included in this data volume.

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The last secondary experimental series of consequence i s the PECON diffusion grid from 1965 through 1967. a t the upwind corner of a small building having a …