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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Wright denies reports of DOE plans to axe Hanford’s WTP
Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued a statement on September 9 denying reports that the Department of Energy plans to terminate the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WTP) at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
A. I. Miller, D. A. Spagnolo, J. R. DeVore
Nuclear Technology | Volume 112 | Number 2 | November 1995 | Pages 204-213
Technical Paper | Radioisotopes and Isotope | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A35174
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tritium removal and heavy water upgrading are essential components of the heavy water-moderated reactor that is the heart of the Advanced Neutron Source (ANS) to be built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The technologies for these two processes, which are closely related, are reviewed in the context of the ANS requirements. The evolution of the design of the Heavy Water Upgrading and Detritiation Facility (HWUDF) for ANS is outlined, and the final conceptual design is presented. The conceptual design of HWUDF has two main component systems: (a) a front-end combined electrolysis and catalytic exchange (CECE) system and (b) a back-end cryogenic distillation (CD) system. The CECE process consists of a countercurrent exchange column for hydrogen-water exchange over a wetproofed catalyst and electrolysis to convert water into hydrogen. It accepts all the tritiated heavy water streams of the reactor and performs an almost total separation into a protium (light hydrogen) stream containing tritium and deuterium at only natural abundance and a deuterium stream containing all the tritium and almost no protium. The tritium-containing deuterium stream is then processed by a CD unit, which removes over 90% of the tritium and concentrates it to >99% tritium for indefinite storage as a metal tritide. Deuterium gas with a small residue of tritium is recombined with oxygen from the electrolytic cells and returned as heavy water to the reactor.