French experience in tritiated water management

Weakly active tritiated water is produced in tritium plants by atmosphere clean-up systems. The bipolar electrolysis process, based on isotopic separation by selective electrochemical permeation of hydrogen and its isotopes through palladium alloys membranes, could be used for isotopic enrichment of this water and for its volume reduction, together with a negligible atmospheric tritium reject. On the other hand, the treatment of highly active tritiated water, formed by direct reaction between tritium and traces of oxygen, that is trapped onto molecular sieve, requires desorption and reduction to produce tritiated hydrogen that could be treated by gas phase isotopic separation processes.