Tritium Facilities

DOE-HDBK-1132-99

following permanent closure, ongoing site maintenance should not be

needed, and

in the absence of unplanned natural processes or human contact with a

low-level waste disposal facility, calculated contaminant levels in

groundwater at the site boundary should not exceed the maximum

contaminant levels established in Federal statutes.

TRITIUM FACILITIES . The DOE Tritium Focus Group has issued DOE HDBK-1129-99,

2.10

Tritium Handling and Safe Storage. This Handbook provides reference and background

information that should be considered during the design of tritium handling and storage

facilities.

2.10.1

Introduction . The design and operational philosophy of the older tritium

facilities focused on worker protection. The tritium handling equipment was

located in airflow hoods, and any releases from the equipment went into the

ventilation system, up the stack, and directly into the environment. As long as

local airflow requirements were maintained at the proper levels, exposures to

workers were low to nonexistent. The high stacks maintained exposures to

workers and personnel working or living downwind of such releases well below

acceptable levels.

By the mid-to-late 1960s, more modern operational philosophies began to

emerge. The design philosophy changed and placed the equipment that

handled substantial quantities of tritium into gloveboxes; the gloveboxes in turn

were equipped with their own, individualized cleanup systems. Although the

initial intent of this type of change was to reduce tritium emissions to the

environment to near zero by eliminating large releases, the tritium emissions

were only reduced by some 10 to 25 percent. Thus, the primary lesson learned

from this type of operational change strongly suggested that most tritium

emissions to the environment did not come from large releases, but from the

background releases from the facilities themselves.

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