TRITIUM RECOVERY FROM LITHIUM, BASED ON A COLD TRAP

A concept to recover tritium from lithium, based on a cold trap, has b een developed as part of the U.S. contribution to ITER. The cold trap process can only reduce the tritium concentration to about 400 appm, w hich is far above the ITER design goal of reducing the tritium concent ration in lithium to about 1 appm. To achieve this lower goal, protium is added to the lithium to a concentration higher than the saturation concentration of the hydrogen isotope at the cold trap temperature. T hus, LiH and LiT will precipitate out together at the cold trap. The t ritium from the cold trap can be recovered by heating the Li(H + T) to 600 degrees C for decomposition. The H and T then can be separated by a cryogenic distillation process.