A Self-Assaying Tritium Storage Bed for ITER

A safe metal-hydride “self-assaying” tritium storage bed, featuring accurate tritium assaying measurements is being designed, built, and tested at the Tritium Systems Test Assembly (TSTA) at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) program. Time consuming inventory operations can be shortened by utilizing “self-assaying” tritium storage beds. Design considerations, calculations, problems, and construction details of the bed are presented. Sensitivity, predictability, and simplicity are optimized in this design by utilizing thermal radiation as the primary mode of heat transfer. Thermal analysis calculations have shown that the design may provide 15 times the ITER required sensitivity atflill capacity of 150 gT.