Energy From Thorium Discussion Forum

Why is this so? I can see heavy water and light water making a difference, but why should the pressure make such a difference to tritium production?

Most of the PWRs use boron to control the reactivity (while the BWRs don't use it). The boron is added in the primary coolant in the form of boric acid. This acidifies the water.

In order to get a a neutral pH they add LiOH to the primary water (LiOH rises the pH), so there are Li atoms in the water. The boron atoms also make 7Li when they capture a neutron. Some of the Li atoms (7Li and 6Li) absorb neutrons and make tritium.

There must be a fairly large amount of tritium on Earth already, naturally occurring or from weapons testing. Can't they just dump the tritiated water into the Ocean?

Virtually no tritium exists in the environment as a result of weapons testing.
The last significant weapons test programme was in the 90s, which is 25 years or so ago now (the end of NTS use and the French in Polynesia).

That is several half lives, and the large scale nuclear testing in the 50s and 60s is a long time ago now.

Actually, the half life of tritium is 12.32 years, so only about 3/4 of the environmental tritium left after large scale testing stopped has decayed. The Canadians deal with a lot of tritium because they use heavy water as a moderator. So it is possible to deal with.

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Paul Studier

I was sure it had a 12 year half life, so a lot has decayed. Best get on and dump that tritiated water in the Pacific then. I do not see what use storing it will do.

Tritium is not waste. Think about glowing tritium luminaires for example.
I would prefer a refillable bottle instead of a welded bottle – or I guess so. Although the glowing bottle should be recyclable, refilling at home could not be allowed, because inhaling tritium is a health risk.


To improve logistics of tritium consumer products container deposit legislation could be extended to cover tritium products.

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Transuranic heavy elements may not be used where there is life.
– Sapphire & Steel intro

Sorry, I did realise that tritium had a substantial market value, and always has, however, I understood that separating it, isotopically, was impossible?

Dump it in the Pacific ocean.

The Canadians have become extremely adept at separating tritium, and operate a facility adjacent to the Darlington plant, who's purpose is to produce near pure tritium from moderator heavy water

If it is so easy, why did the Japanese ever begin to store tritiated water in endless numbers of tanks? Seperate it, sell the tritium and get the water put into the sea.

Probably because the water they are collecting isn't moderator heavy water, and also probably has other stuff in it, which makes the canadian techniques difficult to apply?

Moderator heavy water costs $300-600/kg

The costs are orders of magnitude apart.

I suspect the ALARA alternative is to release the oldest water first and continue like that.

So dump it into the Ocean then? Storing it in tanks is a nonsense.

I did read an article that had a graphic that showed all the sources of radioactivity in the Oceans and basically, man made sources were totally insignificant compared to those that were there already.