Study for the behavior of tritiated water vapor on organic materials

Kobayashi, Kazuhiro; Hayashi, Takumi; Nakamura, Hirofumi; Yamanishi, Toshihiko; Oya, Yasuhisa*; Okuno, Kenji*

In a fusion reactor of high safety and acceptability, safe confinement of tritium is one of key issues for the fusion reactor. Tritium should be well-controlled and not excessively released to the environment and to prevent workers from excess exposure. Especially, the hot cell and tritium facilities of ITER will use various construction materials. For tritium decontamination processes, so-called soaking effect is important. This effect is based on sorption of tritiated water vapor on the materials and subsequent desorption from them. Therefore, in order to develop for the optimal decontamination technique, the decontamination experiment was carried out as a function of water vapor concentration in the purging gas for epoxy paint, acrylic resin and butyl rubber. As the result, about 70% of the adsorbed tritium on the epoxy paint was removed by adding water vapor in purging gas for 12 hrs. The effect of adding water vapor was found on the decontamination for epoxy paint.