Radioactive Waste Formation During Handling Tritium and its Compound

Abstract

Regularities of radioactive waste formation during tritium and metal tritides handling were experimentally researched. There were identified: all types of the waste should be considered as radioactive ones, the volume of gaseous waste is greater than that of liquid and solid waste by 106 - 107 times, and the gas contains about 90% of the total tritium activity of the waste. Up to 50-70% of the total tritium activity in the exhausted gases are in the tritium oxide form, so tritium oxide in the exhausted gases should be considered as the main factor of radiation hazard for the public and the environment. Technological equipment is the source of tritium and its oxide ingress into the atmosphere. Tritium and tritium oxide removal systems have been developed at VNIIEF to recover tritium in effluent gases. The systems are based on tritium catalytic oxidation and tritium oxide sorption by synthetic zeolites. The efficiency of tritium recovery of the effluent gases is greater than 99.9%. Implementation of the process at the RFNC-VNIIEF tritium facility permitted reduction of tritium releases to the environment by 200 times. Technologies for tritium-containing liquid and solid waste reprocessing have been developed and operated in the production practice. The cost effectiveness of the technologies operated is assessed over 1,000,000 (U.S.) per year.