Accelerator production of tritium activities at the Savannah River Site

The Savannah River site (SRS) has been chosen as the site to host the accelerator production of tritium (APT). This facility, which will produce tritium for national defense purposes, is a natural extension of the site's original mission. All of the tritium for U.S. weapons needs has been produced at SRS in the heavy water reactors (now shut down) that operated until 1988. Much of the tritium-handling infrastructure still exists at SRS, and the tritium recycling and purification facilities are new and fully operational. This paper summarizes the reasons for the choice of the site and describes some of the early SRS efforts to learn the new technology, to weave into it a strong operations/production ethic, and to prepare the site to host the APT