Tritium Accountancy and Relevant Instrumentation for the WDF from Cernavoda NPP

Abstract

The Cernavoda Tritium Removal Facility (CTRF) will be built at Cernavoda Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) for tritium removal and recovery from tritiated heavy water during the operation of CANDU reactors. A Cryogenic Distillation process in combination with a Liquid Phase Catalytic Exchange (LPCE) process is used for tritium removal/recovery from tritiated water. According with the regulation “Implementation of a Nuclear Material Accountancy and Control System by Operators of Nuclear Installations (2009/120/Euratom)” of the European Commission, the operators of nuclear facilities are obliged to provide to the European Commission, regularly detailed information about their installations and the nuclear material in their possession. Also, according with the regulations of the Commission for Control of the Nuclear Activities (CNCAN) from Romania, a nuclear facility is mandated to apply a control system for nuclear guarantees. Therefore, an important issue for CTRF, should be the tritium accountancy in the facility. In order to quantify the tritium inventory in the facility, the subsystems necessary for tritium accountancy in normal operation and also during facility shut down should be identified. Although the facility is, still in the design and construction phase, it is required to identify adequate instrumentation to ensure the implementation of the safeguards requirements. This technical note presents the methods and relevant tritium measurements instrumentation to quantify the tritium inventories from the main systems of the facility.