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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Fusion Science and Technology
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Deep geologic repository progress—2025 Update
Editor's note: This article has was originally published in November 2023. It has been updated with new information as of June 2025.
Outside my office, there is a display case filled with rock samples from all over the world. It contains a disk of translucent, orange salt from the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.; a core of white-and-bronze gneiss from the site of the future deep geologic repository in Eurajoki, Finland; several angular chunks of fine-grained, gray claystone from the underground research laboratory at Bure, France; and a piece of coarse-grained granite from the underground research tunnel in Daejeon, South Korea.
Jason Wilson, James Becnel, David Demange, Bernice Rogers
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 8 | November 2019 | Pages 802-809
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1629249
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The tokamak exhaust processing (TEP) system performs chemical separations on ITER fuel cycle process streams. TEP recovers hydrogen isotopes (Q2) from impurities such as argon, nitrogen, tritiated water (Q2O), tritiated ammonia (NQ3), and tritiated hydrocarbons such as methane (CQ4). TEP sends the hydrogen isotopes for subsequent processing to the isotope separation system or the storage and delivery system. At the same time, an impurity gas stream of extremely low tritium content (less than 8.88 TBq of tritium per day) is produced and sent to the detritiation system (DS). To accomplish the separation, the major hydrogen processing subsystems within TEP are hydrogen-like processing (HLP) and air-like processing/water-like processing (ALP/WLP). (Hydrogen-like gases are Q2, He, and Ne; air-like gases are Ar, O2, N2, O2, and CQ4; and water-like gases are Q2O and NQ3). The main processing equipment used for the HLP is a series of palladium-silver permeators (PMs) with ALP/WLP using a series of Palladium Membrane Reactors (PMRs). Aspen Dynamics is the primary tool for verifying system performance of the TEP design. Aspen Dynamics is a commercial, equation-based simulation package for chemical processing. The software enables the user to develop a process model from predefined unit-operation models or construct its own unique unit-operations model. Verification of the TEP simulation model to experimental data was achieved during the TEP conceptual design. The designs for the TEP HLP and ALP/WLP subsystems are examined for the updated gas inputs in terms of compositions and flow rates. The TEP simulation is used to predict tritium output of the TEP processing subsystems This paper describes how the Aspen model of the equipment was improved and used to size the equipment (PMs and PMRs) to process the various gas streams and maintain the discharge to DS to below the limit.