A new passive method for airborne radioactivity monitoring

Radioactive contaminants released from the activities of nuclear industries pose long-term threats to environmental safety and public health. Knowledge about the key radionuclides environmental levels, dynamics, distribution, and transport processes is essential for the systematic assessment of the radioecological consequences and the development of targeted decontamination measures. In the atmospheric environment, although active monitoring based on sampling pump techniques is widely used in routine radiation monitoring schemes, the high cost and electricity dependence make it difficult to achieve a long-term monitoring with high spatial resolution over large nuclear-contaminated areas, thus weakening the representativeness of monitoring results. Here, we aim to develop a passive monitoring technique to accomplish the integral monitoring of the airborne radioactive contaminants in gaseous (especially for tritium, a radioisotope of hydrogen) and particle forms. Briefly, we will design two novel passive samplers that enable low-cost, electricity-independent environmental sample collection. Meanwhile, we will develop these tailored analytical methods for determining the activity in the collected samples with highly sensitive techniques, which can significantly improve the resolution and reliability of environmental monitoring data. Relying on passive monitoring techniques, we plan to apply them in the nuclear reactor hall and the nuclear-contaminated areas to reveal the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of radioactive contaminants, which will provide key basis for hotspot location and targeted decommissioning/remediation of nuclear-contaminated areas. In addition, we intend to establish a global tritium monitoring network vis passive samplers to characterize the baseline of airborne tritium, which will offer the first actual tritium background for future tritium contamination control/management. Moreover, the characterized tritium levels in different regions will also greatly promote our understanding of environmental tritium behavior, which can help to integrate tritium dynamics into the global water cycle tracing and improve our sustainable use of water resources.