Savannah River has designed and safely operated numerous tritium processes and facilities. One of the key unit operations at the Site is the separation of hydrogen isotopes. Processes used are thermal diffusion, batch cryogenic distillation, and batch chromatography.

Recently, a new isotope separation process was developed at Savannah River: the Thermal Cycling Absorption Process (TCAP) which is a continuous chromatographic separation technique using metal hydrides as packing materials. TCAP has been chosen as the hydrogen isotope separation process for a new tritium handling facility at Savannah River, the Replacement Tritium Facility.