Catcher Above Drinking Water Standard 2. Plume Defined For E20 Catcher Above Drinking Water Standard 15. Environmental A. Radionuclide Releases 16. The catcher is a device that cleans up the beam in the AGS Ring. Soil shielding outside the E20 beam catcher can become radioactive.
Rainwater can leach the radioactivity in the soil shield to groundwater.
Thus, the Ground Water Monitoring Improvements Plan for FY98 and FY99 required the installation of two permanent monitoring wells, which were placed about 100 feet downgradient of the E20 beam catcher for the purpose of detecting radioactivity in groundwater closer to the suspected source. The E20 beam catcher was retired from service in 1999 and a new device was built at a different location in the AGS Ring, and protected with a rainwater impermeable cap. These newer geoprobes were inserted to help define the width of the plume at 100 feet. This Occurrence Report was submitted because the plume results close to the former E20 Catcher are above the Drinking Water Standard. The AGS was operating with high intensity proton beam in the Ring.