Radiolyse de l'eau confinée dans les zéolithes 4A : application à l'entreposage d'eau tritiée

摘要

Self-radiolysis of tritiated water (HTO) adsorbed in zeolites 4A shows differences compared tofree-bulk water radiolysis. We studied the roles of zeolites on that. We took special care with the influence of water loading ratio. We first exposed zeolites toexternal irradiations, reproducing selectively the doseor the dose rate measured in the case of tritiated waterstorage. This strategy enables the characterising of the samples after their irradiation since they are notcontaminated by tritium. Those experiments revealedthe high stability of zeolites 4A. We used a secondapproach which consisted in studying the precise case of self-radiolysis of tritiated water, in order to obtain radiolytic yields representative of HTO storage. The comparison between the quantities of gas released when zeolites are exposed to the three different sources that we used (electrons accelerated at 10 MeV, ! released by radioactive decay of 137Cs and "- released by radioactive decay of tritium) revealed the strong influence of the dose rate. More over, whatever the irradiation source,zeolites 4A first favour hydrogen release andsecondarily oxygen release too. On the contrary,zeolites favour next a recombination between those radiolytic products, with a dependence on their water loading ratio. Several processes are discussed to explain such a phenomena, not noticed during the free-bulkwater radiolysis