Replacement of tritiated water from irradiated fuel storage bay
- Atomic Energy of Canada Limited - AECL, Chalk River Laboratories, Chalk River, ON (Canada)
Recently, AECL developed a novel method to reduce tritium emissions (to groundwater) and personnel doses at the NRU (National Research Universal) reactor irradiated fuel storage bay (also known as rod or spent fuel bay) through a water swap process. The light water in the fuel bay had built up tritium that had been transferred from the heavy water moderator through normal fuel transfers. The major advantage of the thermal stratification method was that a very effective tritium reduction could be achieved by swapping a minimal volume of bay water and warm tritiated water would be skimmed off the bay surface. A demonstration of the method was done that involved Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling of the swap process and a test program that showed excellent agreement with model prediction for the effective removal of almost all the tritium with a minimal water volume. Building on the successful demonstration, AECL fabricated, installed, commissioned and operated a full-scale system to perform a water swap. This full-scale water swap operation achieved a tritium removal efficiency of about 96%.
- OSTI ID:
- 22429701
- Journal Information:
- Fusion Science and Technology, Vol. 67, Issue 2; Conference: TRITIUM 2013: 10. International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology, Nice Acropolis (France), 21-25 Oct 2013; Other Information: Country of input: France; 2 refs.; ISSN 1536-1055
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Integral Reactor Containment Condensation Model and Experimental Validation
Highly tritiated water processing by isotopic exchange