Separation of Hydrogen Isotopes Downloaded from pubs.acs.org by 5.62.159.72 on 12/01/18. For personal use only.
PREFACE '"phis volume describes process development and plant performance -•- for the separation of deuterium from hydrogen, tritium from hydrogen, and tritium from deuterium. All of the important processes that are recognized today are included although not necessarily in equal detail or appropriate relative emphasis. Nonetheless, this volume forms a valuable, up-to-date report on the status of hydrogen isotope separation. Obviously heavy water production is essential to a program of nuclear power production that is based on natural uranium-fueled and heavy water-moderated reactors. Canada and India have selected this route to nuclear power, and both are establishing an industrial heavy water production capability. The Canadian design of a heavy water power reactor, the C A N D U design, requires 0.85 Mg of heavy water per electrical M W of installed capacity. The heavy water is not consumed by reactor operation so that the demand for heavy water is set by the rate at which new nuclear power stations are built. A small make-up of less than 1% of the inventory per year is needed to replace losses by leakage. With 4000 M W of nuclear-electric generating capacity in operation and with 15,000 M W committed for operation by 1988, Canada has a very substantial demand for heavy water. Several large production plants are in operation and more are being built. Thus, it is not surprising that one-half of the papers in this volume are from Canada; the chapters report on plant performance and on the development of alternative processes to the established water-hydrogen-sulfide exchange method. Tritium is produced by neutron capture in deuterium and by uranium fission. Thus, heavy water in reactors contains a gradually increasing concentration of T D O , and aqueous wastes from any water-cooled reactor and from fuel reprocessing contain T H O . Tritium recovery from these sources is desirable to minimize the release of tritium to the biosphere, and such tritium separation plants will become increasingly common. Tritium separation on a much larger scale will be necessary when fusion reactors are developed successfully. Atomic Energy of Canada, Limited Ontario, Canada December, 1977
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HOWARD K . R A E
