Tritium Production within Thermal Reactor Nuclear Fuel

摘要

Tritium is an important nuclide for environmental assessments of releases from nuclear power plants, fuel storage facilities, reprocessing and waste handling plants. Its half-life of 12.3 years limits concerns about this nuclide to the first hundred years after its generation and thus it is a concern for operations in the short and medium terms, but it is not an issue for longer-term geological disposal. The development of new fuels and fuel cycles may significantly alter the generation of tritium in fuel, the source term for the estimation of the environmental release of tritium. This paper accesses the production routes of tritium in nuclear fuels during thermal reactor operation and assesses where new fuels and fuel cycles will significantly alter its production. Recommendations are made to improve the accuracy of the calculation of tritium within spent fuels from thermal reactors using the recently available JEFF-3.1 data.