Performance of the improved tritium decanting facility in support of JET tritium operations

Abstract

A Tritium fuel cycle must have the capability to import tritium inventory from transport storage containers to enable initial inventory stockpiling and future refresh of the inventory. The Joint European Torus (JET) Active Gas Handling System (AGHS) previously imported tritium inventory from Amersham uranium beds (U-beds) via a decanting system housed in the Analytical Make-up box secondary containment. Due to significant operational challenges with this decanting system, a new system, the Tritium Decanting Facility (TDF) was designed and built, to enable import of tritium inventory from Amersham U-beds for the JET Deuterium–Tritium experiment 2. The TDF process design incorporated several changes, including a tertiary containment with independent purge system, process services supply including argon, and direct connection to the AGHS Intermediate Storage system. These changes resulted in significant improvements to the decanting process, including a significant reduction in contamination effects from off-gassing, reduced decanting time, and reduced risk of exposure to the operators. The key features of the TDF design and their subsequent impact on the operation of the AGHS are discussed in detail.