New SRS Tritium Facility Capability Increases Process Efficiency
Tuesday, October 20th, 2020
A five-year-long project at the Savannah River Site’s (SRS) Tritium Extraction Facility (TEF) has enabled the Site to more efficiently handle waste gases resulting from work supporting the Nation’s nuclear deterrent.
At the TEF, tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen and a key element in nuclear weapons, is extracted from rods irradiated in a Tennessee Valley Authority reactor in preparation for loading into reservoirs for shipment to the U.S. Department of Defense.
This process creates waste gases containing a mixture of hydrogen isotopes and other isotopes, a combi- nation that TEF previously sent to a separate tritium facility for processing. With the new diffuser system design, TEF separates the hydrogen isotopes from the other types, allowing the non-hydrogen gases to be discharged with the building’s heating, ventilation, and air condition exhaust through a stack.
“This project was the result of careful planning, perseverance, and diligent work by many differ- ent work groups over the last five years,” said Joey Huckabee, TEF Facility Manager. “TEF now has more freedom to stack its own process waste gas without having to coordinate interbuilding transfers with the H Area New Manufacturing (HANM) facility. This eliminates the need to interrupt processes to manage waste gas, reduces the burden on the HANM tritium process strip- per system, and pro- vides valuable stacking redundancy within the tritium facilities.”
This project was completed in several phases. Detailed design started in April 2015, followed by pro- curement and field construction. Operational readiness activities involving safety basis work, training and procedures, and maintenance records were followed by system testing. These activities were self- assessed by groups within the SRS tritium facilities.
Following self-assessment, SRNS and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) per- formed independent Readiness Assessments and once those were complete, Construction performed final tie-in activities. The system was then tested using normal operating procedures and placed in service July 2020.
Mark Davis, SRNS Acting Senior Vice President of NNSA Operations and Programs, said, “This new ca- pability was several years in the making, and I’m proud of all the teams that worked to make what began as an idea a reality. Thank you for all you do to keep us the backbone of deterrence in support of peace.”
