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Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
S. Raftopoulos, C. Gentile, P. LaMarche, J. Langford
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 30 | Number 3 | December 1996 | Pages 922-925
Fuel Cycle and Tritium Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A11963056
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Tritium Purification System (TPS) is a hydrogen isotope separation system put into operation within the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) Tritium Systems. The TPS operates in two stages: extraction of hydrogen isotopes from the TFTR plasma waste effluents via a Palladium/Silver diffuser; and separation of hydrogen isotopes via a multiple-stage cryogenic distillation system.
Commissioning of TPS included: Operational testing at Canadian Fusion Fuels Technology Project (CFFTP) and at Princeton, thorough helium and tritium leakchecks, trial run with a limited tritium inventory (1 kCi), and an integrated systems test using 10 kCi of tritium. The integrated systems test, which was started in April of 1995 took approximately eight months to perform. Several “infant mortality” failures, requiring numerous line breaks into highly contaminated piping, were safely performed. On December 18, 1995 the TPS delivered its first batch of purified tritium product.
This paper provides a brief overview of the TPS design and theory of operation. The focus of this paper is the commissioning, operation, performance and maintenance of the device. Lessons learned in maintenance and repair of the TPS are also addressed.