A pilot plant for the recovery and separation of tritium from the spent fuel of fusion experiments

In tritium-burning tokamak experiments like JET or TFTR some hundreds of curies of tritium are to be separated per plasma discharge. A gaschromatographic process to separate the hydrogen isotopes in order to recover the tritium from the spent fuel was investigated. A pilot plant is described in detail, which is equipped with two separation columns, three uranium traps and automatic valves. The system works in a circulation mode. This plant is installed in a glovebox (2 x 1,2 x 2,5m, 1 x w x h) in order to be processed also with tritium. (author)