An Approach for Reducing Carbon-14 Stack Emissions via Optimal Use of Ion Exchang Resins at CANDU Plant

Relatively high carbon-14 emissions, which occurred at PHWR Plant during 1998 and 1999, made the site staff to implement several operational improvements: 1) the frequency and volume of the moderator cover gas purging were reduced through increased $O_2$ additions to the cover gas, 2) the 'old' resin columns were not used during re-start of the reactor from outage, 3) efforts were made to minimize air ingress, 4) the maximum service time of moderator ion-exchange columns were restricted to about 80 days. Through the improvements, the carbon-14 emission from each PHWR reactor returned to the normal levels during the remainder of 1999 and during 2000. We carried out a special surveillance at W-1 and W-3 from September 2001 to August 2002 to properly evaluate ways to optimize the use of moderator ion exchange resins from a C-14 perspective. The surveillance showed that only data that provided an operational marker for deciding when to remove the IX-resin column is an observed increase in the C-14 stack emissions themselves. Also, it is shown that any increase over the rate of 0.4 Ci $month^{-1}$ for two consecutive weeks may be the indication for an ion-exchange resin column change, especially if the IX-resin column has been in service for more than 80 days.