Heavy Water Detritiation to Support CANDU Station Maintenance Activities

Abstract

Heavy water and tritium control are important aspects of CANDU operation and have a major impact on station maintenance activities. Station personnel are trained to understand the importance of heavy water management and the economics and environmental impact of tritiated heavy water losses. This paper discusses new GE technology that can now make a major improvement in CANDU maintenance activities through significant reductions in station tritium levels. Tritium is of particular concern in the CANDU industry given the nature of heavy water reactors to build up high levels of tritium over time. High tritium levels in the reactor vault significantly slow down maintenance activities in the reactor vault due to the requirement for personnel protective equipment, including breathing apparatus and cumbersome plastic air suits. The difficulties increase as reactors age and tritium levels increase. Building upon GE's extensive operational experience in tritium management in CANDU reactors and its own tritium handling facility, GE has developed a new large-scale diffusion-based isotope separation process as an alternative to conventional cryogenic distillation. Having a tritium inventory an order of magnitude lower than conventional cryogenic distillation, this process is very attractive for heavy water detritiation, and applicable to single and multi-unit CANDU stations. This new process can now provide a step change reduction in CANDU heavy water tritium levels resulting in reduced environmental emissions and lowering reactor vault tritium MPC(a) levels. Reactor vault tritium can be reduced sufficiently for maintenance activities to be done without plastic suits, leading to shorter outages, improved station capacity factors, and improved station economics.