Curies Of Tritium Research Articles

Standing Up the National Ignition Facility Radiation Protection Program

Operation of the NIF requires a large and varied number of routine and infrequent activities involving contaminated and radioactive systems, both in servicing online equipment and offline refurbishment of components. Routine radiological operations include up to several dozen entries into contaminated systems per day, multiple laboratories refurbishing radiologically impacted parts, handling of tens of curies of tritium, and (eventually) tens of workers spending most of their day working in radiation areas and handling moderately activated parts. Prior to the introduction of radioactive materials and neutron producing experiments (capable of causing activation), very few of the operating staff had any radiological qualifications or experience. To support the full NIF operating program, over 600 radiological workers needed to be trained, and a functional and large-scale radiological protection program needed to be put in place. It quickly became evident that there was a need to supplement the LLNL site radiological protection staff with additional radiological controls technicians and a radiological protection staff within NIF operations to manage day-to-day activities. This paper discusses the approach taken to stand up the radiological protection program and some lessons learned.

Tritium Emissions Reduction Facility

The Tritium Emissions Reduction Facility (TERF) will be a system for the continuous processing of tritium containing gases collected from various operations at Mound. The basis of the system operation will be the oxidation of elemental hydrogen isotopes and organic molecules at elevated temperatures on precious metal catalyst beds, and the adsorption of the resulting oxide (water) on molecular sieve dryers. The TERF will be expected to handle from 400,000 to 1,000,000 curies of tritium per year in the process gas stream and release no more than 200 curies per year to the atmosphere. Consequently, the TERF will need to convert and capture tritium at low concentrations in gas efficiently and reliably. 5 refs., 2 figs.

Detritiation of glovebox atmosphere by using compact tritium removal equipment.

A compact tritium removal equipment (TRE), assembled in a console with casters, has been developed for detritiation of air in a glovebox used for handling of several curies of tritium. The TRE was designed to remove gaseous tritium in the form of T2, HT and CH3T through oxidation with precious metal/alumina catalysts followed by adsorption on zeolite pellets. From the detritiation experiments with hydrogen tritide (HT, 2–20 mCi), the TRE was confirmed to have sufficient performance for the practical use. The tritium concentration in the test gas (total volume –32l; 1%H2, 5%O2, 94%N2) decreased from 0.64 to 6.4 ×10-7 Ci.m3 within 155 min when the TRE was operated under the recirculation mode with the flow rate of 200 l-h1 at the catalyst temperature of 200°C. In addition, the HT-to-HTO fractional conversion was determined at various catalyst temperatures (25–200°C) and flow rates (100–360 lh-1).

Performance and improvements of the tritium handling facility at the Los Alamos scientific laboratory

A major problem facing todays nuclear energy industry is the release of radioactive waste products to the atmosphere. The DP-East Tritium Handling Facility at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL), activated December 5, 1974 has processed 3.8 x 10/sup 6/ curies of tritium with a total stack release of 704.5 curies as of December 12, 1979. This averages only 11.7 Ci/month which to our knowledge is the lowest stack release any major tritium facility has achieved. The facility includes an 11.5 m/sup 3/ dry box with associated gas purification system (GPS) and an effluent treatment system (FTS). The system performance, problems, and improvements are discussed with special emphasis given to the ETS, the new dry box waste disposal system, and the new automated logic control system, all of which contribute significantly to the low level tritium release at this facility.