Trapping Tritium: A High-Stakes Game
Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that has both military and civilian applications. Used to boost the destructive yield of nuclear bombs, it is also used in biomedical research. When tritium atoms replace hydrogen atoms in compound, radioactive tracing--a basic research technique--becomes possible in a host of procedures.
Tritium is, in short, a gas for which there is a steady demand. Inconveniently, it is a gas that occurs only in minute quantities in nature. Tritium for human use must be manufactured either in a nuclear reactor or in an accelerator.
Scarcity is thus the first half of the case for legislation recently passed by the California Assembly that would require tritium recycling by commercial as well as non-commercial users. Both kinds of users produce, besides useful tritiated research compounds, large quantities of tritiated waste. It is this waste that the legislation, sponsored by Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), targets for recycling.
A well-developed technology exists, and has long been in use at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, by which tritiated waste is processed to the point where it may be shipped out for recycling at a Department of Energy facility in Mound, Ohio. What the new legislation accomplishes is the transfer of this technology from the non-commercial to the commercial sector.
Secretary James D. Watkins has made such technology transfers a priority in his administration of the federal Department of Energy. He contends, on good evidence, that in one area after another, foreign competitors manage public/private technical cooperation better than the United States does.
Wherever security considerations permit, he is eager to put research breakthroughs made with taxpayer money to the widest possible use. He has welcomed the news that the production/recovery cycle established at Lawrence Berkeley and Mound was about to find its way into the private sector. The California legislation, he said, might well prove a model.
Cost-effective management of a scarce manufactured good is, however, far from being the only argument for tritium recycling. The other half of the case is the removal of a hazardous and extremely volatile gas from the waste stream. Waste tritium is officially regarded as low-level radioactive waste, (LLRW) but it is carcinogenic if ingested; and as an isotope of hydrogen, it can bond with oxygen and spread as contaminated water.
Tritium has often leaked from LLRW dumps in which it was placed. Any reduction in the quantity of tritium that California needs to dispose of is therefore to be welcomed, and because the Lawrence Berkeley technology recovers as much as 99% of waste tritium, the reduction in view is substantial.
We applaud the passage of this bill by the Assembly and urge prompt approval in the Senate.
