Caper Modifications and First Experimental Results on Highly Tritiated Water Processing with PERMCAT at the Tritium Laboratory Karlsruhe

The CAPER facility operated at the Tritium Laboratory Karlsruhe for the demonstration of the tokamak exhaust processing system comprises a PERMCAT reactor as final clean-up stage. CAPER has been upgraded to enable the production of highly tritiated water (HTW) to be detritiated with PERMCAT. A staged approach for HTW production in CAPER is ongoing, using currently a metal oxide reactor, and later a micro-channel catalytic reactor. The whole experimental plan using the current single-tube PERMCAT reactor shall cover the HTW processing at flow rates up to 10 mL/min, with HTW up to 1.4 MCi/kg (i.e. stoichiometric DTO). The staged approach and corresponding CAPER modifications are described. The first experimental results obtained using metal oxide reactor are reported and discussed.