Safety handling characteristics of high-level tritiated water

Hayashi, Takumi; Ito, Takeshi*; Kobayashi, Kazuhiro; Isobe, Kanetsugu; Nishi, Masataka

Fusion Engineering and Design, 81(8-14), p.1365 - 1369, 2006/03

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fusengdes.2005.09.062

In a fusion reactor, high-level tritiated water of more than GBq/ml will be generated and stored temporally in the various areas. High level tritiated water decomposes by itself and generates hydrogen and oxygen, and becomes to tritiated hydrogen peroxide water, however, effective G-values from tritiated water are different from those obtained -ray experiments in our previous report. Furthermore, tritiated water of about 250GBq/ml has been stored for several years safely and checked its characteristics. Using the above experiences, this paper summarizes safety requirements for storage of high-level tritiated water and discusses design issues of the safety storage system. Concerning gaseous species, storage tank should be maintained at negative pressure and purged periodically or constantly to dedicated tritium removal system. Specially, it is important that the G-value of high-level tritiated water is increasing with decreasing the tritium concentration. The pH and ORP (Oxidation Reduction Potential) of tritiated water have been also changed depending on the tritium concentration and maintained for more than several years in glass vessel. High-level tritiated water of more than GBq/ml was acid and became to be corrosive depending on the dissolved species. Large amount of tritiated water will be stored in the various tanks of stainless steel, therefore, it should be monitored so that the liquid situation is maintained not to be corrosive.