Tritium Measurement I—Tritium in Gas, Liquid, and Solid

SMART_TC: an R&D Programme on uses of artificial intelligence techniques for tritium monitoring in complex ITER-like tritium plant systems

“…The main tool to manage the fault state of a process is the use of measurements. Tritium concentration sensing solutions vary from a wide range of accuracy and applicability and different measurement techniques, such as liquid scintillation counters, ionization chambers, proportional counters, He-3 measurement with mass spectroscopy, RAMAN spectroscopy, gas chromatography and calorimetry [4]. Among them, calorimetry is one of the few able to measure tritium at high concentrations by accounting for the tritium decay heat, but it yields an accuracy of 2-3 digits only.…”

“…This conservative static approach is constrained by the limitations of the current sensing monitoring solutions and the regulatory tritium emissions limits [4]. In this strategy, the flexibility of the plant operation is reduced and the tritium self-sufficiency, which is a key aspect to secure in a fusion reactor, is difficult to provide due to the mandatory periodic shutdown procedures.…”

“…Tritium sensors are essential to perform tritium balance monitoring and assess the amount of tritium throughout the plant. However, there is no sensor solution able to provide a measurement accuracy over the 3-4 digits, and a sensor technology that can cover the whole range of concentration in which tritium can be found in a fusion reactor doesn't exist [4]. Special applications of artificial intelligence to process monitoring arise as a possible contribution to the problem of tritium monitoring in fusion power plants.…”