HAPL's Potential Tritium Issues Kirk L. Shanahan (ed.) Defense Programs Technology Section Savannah River National Laboratory Aiken, SC HAPL Review, Oct , 2007 WSRC-STI

Background  Charter - To identify tritium issues potentially affecting a HAPL IFE reactor facility – not limited in scope or to a particular reactor design  Contributors – James Klein, Kit Heung, Elliot Clark, Kirk Shanahan – SRNL Kevin Sessions – SRS Tritium Facility  Format – whitepaper - began Oct. 2006, comments from PPPL and LANL, issued Jan. 29, 2007

HAPL's Potential Tritium Issues vs. ITER’s HAPL facility will be very similar to ITER Functions defined in ITER should be found in HAPL

Original Focus – Can we do it? Early HAPL facility concerns focused on reactor core Courtesy G. Sviatoslavsky, University of Wisconsin Courtesy C. Gentile, PPPL

Yes, we can – What next? C. Gentile’s slide from 16 th HAPL Workshop Now that there is a reactor concept, time to consider T processing

HAPL's Potential Future Fuel Recovery System T in Solids Recovery Sys. Target Loading Facility Tritium Extraction System Waste Handling Facility * Analytical Services Embedded * * * * * But more functionality needed!

Regulatory Issues Immense!  Tritium Handling requires significant infrastructure as well Accounting ― Inventory ― Measurement QA Radiation Exposure Records ― Personnel ― Environmental Facility Documentation Licensing and Regulatory Compliance Waste Handling and Monitoring

Whitepaper’s Primary Conclusions  Major Point – need to start developing Conceptual Design of other needed facilities – Fuel Recovery System – recovers T from gas stream (already covered in PPPL CD) – Tritium Loading Facility – loads the plastic shells and delivers to reactor (LANL is working on part of this) – Tritium in Solids Recovery Facility – deals with tritium recovery from particulates up to large parts – Tritiated Waste Handling Facility – Handles all non-recoverable tritium as waste – Tritium Extraction System – remove T from breeder material  Several minor points made as well

Example of Details  Some specific detailed comments – Possibility of T uptake in plastic shells? – Specific choices for components in FRS CD may need more research (ITER is doing some of this now) – Was worried about use of ferritic steel (but use is minimal to zero) – Where do all the spallation products go? – Further progress in defining the issues rests on the ability to specify stream compositions and time dependencies (flowcharts)

Some New Questions  Some specific questions – T behavior in hot SiC? – T recovery from FLiBe or PbLi? – How do T issues change with higher temperatures and neutron damage?

Recommendations  Recommended Future HAPL Tritium Activities/Studies – C-loading, particulates, etc., of FRS feed stream – T uptake by plastics (Shells, ablation materials, other parts?) – T uptake and impact on other materials of construction (SiC, PbLi, FLiBe, etc., and note that the process equipment will not be at high temp.) – Radioactive material release estimates and ancillary waste issues