Treatment of tritiated exhaust gases at the Tritium Laboratory Karlsruhe

Abstract

The Tritium Laboratory Karlsruhe (TLK) accomplished commissioning; tritium involving activities will start this year. The laboratory is destined mainly to investigating processing of fusion reactor fuel and to developing analytic devices for determination of tritium and tritiated species in view of control and accountancy requirements. The area for experimental work in the laboratory is about 800 m{sup 2}. The tritium infrastructure including systems for tritium storage, transfer within the laboratory and processing by cleanup and isotope separation methods has been installed on an additional 400 m{sup 2} area. All tritium processing systems (=primary systems), either of the tritium infrastructure or of the experiments, are enclosed in secondary containments which consist of gloveboxes, each of them connected to the central depressurization system, a part integrated in the central detritiation system. The atmosphere of each glovebox is cleaned in a closed cycle by local detritiation units controlled by two tritium monitors. Additionally, the TLK is equipped with a central detritiation system in which all gases discharged from the primary systems and the secondary systems are processed. All detritiation units consist of a catalyst for oxidizing gaseous tritium or tritiated hydrocarbons to water, a heat exchanger for cooling the catalyst reactor exhaust gas to room temperature, and a molecular sieve bed for adsorbing the water. Experiments with tracer amounts of tritium have shown that decontamination factors >3000 can be achieved with the TLK detritiation units. The central detritiation system was carefully tested and adjusted under normal and abnormal operation conditions. Test results and the behavior of the tritium barrier preventing tritiated exhaust gases from escaping into the atmosphere will be reported.