TEMPORAL EVOLUTION OF THE H-3 LEVELS IN THE SURFACE WATERS AROUND THEALMARAZ NUCLEAR-POWER-PLANT

We have quantified the evolution during 1994 of the impact on the Tagu s river of liquid releases of H-3 (51.3 TBq in the cited year), origin ating from the functioning of the Almaraz Nuclear Power Plant, and con ditioned by the management of the cooling reservoir water. Taking into account, on the one hand, that tritiated water is hydrodynamically in distinguishable from untritiated water when both form part of the same mass of liquid, and, on the other, the practically null stratificatio n and forced circulation of the water in the cited cooling reservoir, together with the hydrological fluxes interchanged between the said re servoir and the Tagus river (which is entirely regulated in the sectio n under study and, because of prolonged drought, had a relatively smal l flow during the study period), we were able to model satisfactorily the temporal evolution of the H-3 activity in the cooling reservoir.