ETHEL's Systems and Facilities for Safe Management of Tritiated Wastes

The European Tritium Handling Experimental Laboratory (ETHEL) is a new tritium facility at the Commission of the European Community's Joint Research Centre, Ispra Site. The laboratory, destined to handle multigramme amounts of tritium for safety related R&D purposes, is foreseen to start radioactive operations in late 1992. The general operation and maintenance of laboratory systems and future experiments will generate tritiated wastes in gaseous, liquid and solid forms. The management of such wastes under safe working conditions is a stringent laboratory requirement aimed at minimising the risk of unacceptable tritium exposures to workers and the general public. This paper describes the main systems and facilities installed in ETHEL for the safe management of tritiated wastes.