Continuous determination of low-level tritium activity in water

The measurement of sub-nanocurie amounts of tritium in water is of considerable interest to scientists working in environmental, hydrological, and nuclear energy research. Heretofore, the universally accepted method of sampling and batch counting the water in conventional liquid scintillation counters has been considered the only viable method, due to the very long counting time required to obtain statistically significant data. The objective of this paper is to describe research focused on developing a method and instrumentation to monitor very low specific activity tritiated water in a flowing mode.