Study of the behavior of tritiated water vapor in concrete materials

A fusion reactor requires high levels of safety and public acceptability, so safe Confinement of tritium is a key issues. In order to understand tritium behavior in the concrete reactor components, sorption and desorption experiments were carried out as a function of the exposure time for sorption and the kind of purge gas for desorption. The samples used were cement paste, mortar and concrete. These samples were exposed to 740-1110 Bq/cm(3) of HTO vapor in 1 kPa of H2O vapor at room temperature. Desorption experiments were carried out using N-2 purging gas with water vapor by the thermal desorption method. The concrete materials became almost saturated with HTO within about 1-6 months. Though the chemical form of tritium desorbed from the sample was mostly HTO, HT and other compounds were also detected above 673 K. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.