Development of fusion fuel cycle technology at the tritium laboratory Karlsruhe: The experiment CAPRICE

Conference · Sat Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1994

OSTI ID:196953

Glugla, M; Penzhorn, R D ^[1]

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1. Institut fuer Radiochemie, Karlsruhe (Germany)

The development of plasma exhaust fuel clean-up technology for the recovery of chemically bonded and elemental tritium/deuterium isotopes based on catalytic processes involving the thermal decomposition of hydrocarbons and the reduction of water vapor by carbon monoxide (water gas shift reaction) in combination with hydrogen isotope permeation presently constitutes the main experimental activity at the Tritium Laboratory Karlsruhe (TLK). All basic steps of these processes have been tested with protium/deuterium under laboratory and technical scale conditions. In addition, the validity of the integral process concept has also been demonstrated with relevant concentrations of tritium in small scale runs performed in collaboration with TSTA, Los Alamos National Laboratory. A facility carrying the acronym CAPRICE (Catalytic: Purification Experiment) has been erected at the TLK to demonstrate the process assembly with tritium on a technical scale. The design throughput is approx. 10 mol/h of DT and about 1 mol/h of tritiated and untritiated impurities. Depending upon the selected process conditions within the fusion fuel cycle this throughput could actually approach the needs of ITER. These gloves boxes for the primary system and the containment for a 150 m{sup 3}/h scroll pump totaling a volume of 16.6 m{sup 3} are operated under an inert gas atmosphere (0.5-1% O{sub 2}) at slightly below laboratory pressure. Two tritium retention systems provide with four ionization chambers are employed to control the tritium activity in the glove box atmosphere.

• OSTI ID: 196953
• Report Number(s): CONF-940664--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
CATALYSIS
DEUTERIUM COMPOUNDS
FUEL CYCLE
ISOTOPE SEPARATION
THERMONUCLEAR REACTORS
TRITIUM COMPOUNDS