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Fusion Science and Technology
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WIPP: Lessons in transportation safety
As part of a future consent-based approach by the federal government to site new deep geologic repositories for nuclear waste, local communities and states that are considering hosting such facilities are sure to have many questions. Currently, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is the only example of such a repository in operation, and it offers the opportunity for state and local officials to visit and judge for themselves the risks and benefits of hosting a similar facility. But its history can also provide lessons for these officials, particularly the political process leading up to the opening of WIPP, the safety of WIPP operations and transportation of waste from generator facilities to the site, and the economic impacts the project has had on the local area of Carlsbad, as well as the rest of the state of New Mexico.
Norihiro Ikemoto, Hironori Shiraishi, Akira Tsuguchi, Mutsumi Nakamura, Naoki Mizuniwa, Satoshi Akamaru, Masanori Hara
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 81 | Number 6 | August 2025 | Pages 580-590
Regular Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2025.2456894
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A tritium removal system (TRS) has been designed and installed. The TRS can remove tritium leaked into a workspace (100 m3). The tritium removal process in the TRS is a wet method in which leaked tritium compounds are oxidized to tritiated water by a catalyst, and the tritiated water is captured by a molecular sieve bed. The tritium removal performance (TRP) of the TRS was evaluated using H2 and CH4. The TRP is expressed by the relationship between the tritium oxidation efficiency of the catalyst bed and the water-capturing efficiency of the molecular sieve bed. The oxidation efficiency of CH4 increased with increasing the catalyst temperature, and it reached to 0.75 around 280°C. The water-capturing efficiency was found to be 0.97 during the operation.
The relationship between the oxidation efficiency and the water-capturing efficiency was reconstructed to chart and evaluate the tritium removal time. The chart evaluating the TRP of the TRS satisfied the design requirements. The design and evaluation method of this TRS can be applied to other TRSs using the wet method.
