Treatment of Large Volumes of Tritiated Water by Physicochemical Methods of Separation of Hydrogen Isotopes

An analysis is made of today’ status of the problem of management of tritiated water formed on various objects of the nuclear industry. The approach to cleaning flows of such water of tritium depends on its concentration in the water and on the content of another hydrogen isotope, i.e., deuterium, in it. Consideration is given to the use of different physicochemical methods of separation of hydrogen isotopes for cleaning tritiated water with a high concentration of deuterium and its natural content. Since the detritiation of heavy-water flows at the present time has been implemented on a fairly large scale, and the problem of cleaning of light water of tritium is at the stage of discussion, a comparative computational assessment of the dimensions of separation facilities of light-water detritiation based on the technologies of distillation of water and chemical isotope exchange of hydrogen with water is carried out.