Tritium Removal from Contaminated Water Via Infrared Laser Multiple-Photon Dissociation

Isotope separation by means of infrared-laser multiple-photon dissociation offers an efficient way to recover tritium from contaminated light or heavy water found in fission and fusion reactors. For tritium recovery from heavy water, chemical exchange of tritium into deuterated chloroform is followed by selective laser dissociation of tritiated chloroform and removal of the tritiated photoproduct, TCI. The single-step separation factor is at least 2700 and is probably greater than 5000. Here we present a description of the tritium recovery process, along with recent accomplishments in photochemical studies and engineering analysis of a recovery system.