Integrated Tests of Water Detritiation and Cryogenic Distillation in View of ITER Design

One of the main concerns related to licensing of ITER is the amount of potentially tritium release into the environment and the qualification of the barriers against tritium release. The final barrier of tritium release from fuel cycle is the Water Detritiation System (WDS) which will be operated in combination with the Isotope Separation System (ISS). To investigate the performances of various components of these systems, an experimental facility based on Combined Electrolysis Catalytic Exchange (CECE) process with a Cryogenic Distillation (CD) process was built at Tritium Laboratory Karlsruhe. The investigations are focused on two main issues: to quantify the separation performances of deuterium and tritium within the Liquid Phase Catalytic Exchange (LPCE) and CD processes in steady state and in dynamic mode of operation and to develop an integrated control system to be used in ITER ISS, in order to minimize the tritium inventory and to reduce at maximum extent the tritium releases. At TLK the two systems, CECE and CD have been commissioned and the experimental program and preliminary functionality tests of the main components are presented.