Abstract
The possibility of tritium being accreted by the earth from some extraterrestrial source, as has been suggested, has been considered and shown to be highly improbable. The production rate of tritium in the earth's atmosphere by cosmic rays has been calculated from data on the experimentally observed tritium content of meteorites ( 0·63 +0·4 −0·2H 3 atom/cm 2 per sec), and also from cosmic ray flux data and nuclear evaporation theory (1·3 ± 0·5 H 3 atom/cm 2 per sec). These results are in reasonable agreement with the experimentally determined terrestrial accumulation rate of tritium of 1·0 ± 0·3 H 3 atom/ cm 2 per sec. It thus appears that cosmic ray spallation reactions in the earth's atmosphere are the prime, if not the sole, source of terrestrial tritium.
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