Recovery of Tritium Dissolved in Sodium at the Steam Generator of Fast Breeder Reactor

Abstract

The tritium recovery technique in steam generators for fast breeder reactors using the double pipe concept was proposed. The experimental system for developing an effective tritium recovery technique was developed and tritium recovery experiments using Ar gas or Ar gas with 10-10000 ppm oxygen gas were performed using D₂ gas instead of tritium gas. It was found that deuterium permeation through two membranes decreased by installing the double pipe concept with Ar gas. By introducing Ar gas with 10000 ppm oxygen gas, the concentration of deuterium permeation through two membranes decreased by more than 1/200, compared with the one pipe concept, indicating that most of the deuterium was scavenged by Ar gas or reacted with oxygen to form a hydroxide. However, most of the hydroxide was trapped at the surface of the membranes because of the short duration of the experiment.