[en] It has long been known that helium-3 accumulates in metal tritides as tritium decays. Early in life nearly 100% of the helium-3 is retained in the lattice, but when a critical concentration is reached (material dependent), the lattice will no longer retain the helium-3 and it is emitted at about the generation rate. Measurements were recently made on a number of erbium tritides with varying concentrations in the ditritide phase. The expected early release characteristics are observed for all of the samples. However, ditritides with higher tritium concentrations reach the rapid release state at much lower helium-3 concentrations. For instance, the helium to metal concentration for rapid release in the unsaturated ditritide is about 0.22, whereas it is only one-tenth this value in the saturated ditritide. The additional tritium in the tritide appears to be the cause of this effect