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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Strontium: Supply-and-demand success for the DOE’s Isotope Program
The Department of Energy’s Isotope Program (DOE IP) announced last week that it would end its “active standby” capability for strontium-82 production about two decades after beginning production of the isotope for cardiac diagnostic imaging. The DOE IP is celebrating commercialization of the Sr-82 supply chain as “a success story for both industry and the DOE IP.” Now that the Sr-82 market is commercially viable, the DOE IP and its National Isotope Development Center can “reassign those dedicated radioisotope production capacities to other mission needs”—including Sr-89.
G. Modica, R.A.H. Edwards
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 27 | Number 2 | March 1995 | Pages 75-78
doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A11963808
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tritiated water (Q2O) is produced during fusion fuel purification or air detritiation. Before recovering the tritium by isotope separation, the Q2O needs to be reduced to form Q2 gas. The reduction of tritiated water on iron is an alternative to electrolysis and gas-shift reactors. It allows a simple, compact, configuration with low tritium inventory. The reactor design incorporates a palladium alloy permeator which extracts the Q2.
Tests on a commercial iron-based catalyst showed a high reactivity and no degradation with repeated cycling. The optimum temperature for water reduction was 375–395 C, and for iron regeneration using hydrogen, 470–495 C. The first prototype reactor-permeator decomposed 9.5 g water in 8 hrs using 210 g iron. The time needed for iron regeneration was reduced to 16 hrs by recirculating the hydrogen. A pilot-scale reactor permeator is now under development: it should be capable of reducing 35 kg of water per year, operating at 1 bar. Attention to the choice of structural materials will minimise tritium carryover into the water produced during regeneration.