Development of 100Ci tritium handling system

A new experimental system has been developed for use of pure tritium amounting to 100 Ci at a time. The system consists of two experimental chambers and other components such as tritium storage-supply, gas purification, isotope separation, and exhaust gas handling devices. These components provide a complete tritium circulation in the system, and hence tritium waste can be minimized for a variety of experimental works. One of the chambers is designed for experiments using molecular tritium, and the other hand tritium plasma generated with ECR discharge. A Zr-Ni alloy is applied for impurity removal from the exhaust gas from both of the experimental chambers and gas chromatography is used for the isotope separation of purified hydrogen isotope mixtures. Other kinds of gettering materials are used for tritium isotope-supply. The exhaust gas handling system has two different devices; one is a conventional wet device, consisting of a Pt-catalyst bed and a molecular sieve bed, the other a dry device using two getter beds. This paper describes the details of the system as well as its components and the results of system performance test using non-radioactive hydrogen isotopes. (author)