OPTICAL POLLUTANT MONITOR

There exist many waste sites where the detailed characterization of the contamination needs to be performed to determine whether or not active remediation is necessary. These tests should be performed in situ since many of the contaminants are volatile. In addition, some of the sites are contaminated with radioactive waste, making in-site detection of contaminants difficult because the detectors become damaged by the radioactivity. Also, disposing of radioactive samples brought to the surface for analysis may be difficult. Monitoring of waste sites is important to determine which sites pose a health hazard as well as to determine which remediated sites no longer pose one. A device which uses a laser for the detection of the contaminant and fiber optics for the transport of the signals to and from the sample will be discussed in this proposal. This detector will be capable of working in a radioactive environment and will provide the investigator with an in-situ, rapid, non-invasive method of simultaneously measuring the presence as well as the concentration of multiple contaminants.