Tritium (3H), the radioactive isotope of hydrogen, has an extremely low natural occurrence due to its 12.32 years half-life; it is a low-abundance by-product in normal operations of today nuclear reactors, but future GEN IV fission and fusion reactors are expected to generate and transport significantly higher levels of tritium. Moreover, due to high temperature operation conditions, tritium could permeate through the confinement materials: indeed, as all hydrogen isotopes, it is highly mobile in materials such as metals. As a part of the international effort as Europe transitions to low-carbon energy sources, technological solutions to prevent release into the environment and characterization tool to monitor tritium levels are needed, with key implications on safety and social acceptability. Consequences of accidental exposure, whether through dispersion in the environment and integration to the food chain, or directly to the workers or population, are to be understood to be able to propose suitable strategies, for instance developing permeation barrier to minimize tritium permeation at source.
TITANS (Tritium Impact and Transfer in Advanced Nuclear reactorS) is a transdisciplinary project carried out by 21 partners from material sciences, process engineering, biology, dosimetry, environmental sciences and modelling, within the framework of Horizon Europe Euratom research and innovation programme. TITANS aims at contributing to research and innovation on cross-cutting activities required to improve knowledge on tritium management with a multidisciplinary approach at each step of the tritium life cycle: develop tritium release mitigation strategies, improve waste management and refine knowledge in the field of radiotoxicity, radiobiology and dosimetry. Three scientific work packages address these issues:
- WP1: Proposals for enhancement of barriers against tritium permeation and tritiated waste management
- WP2: Tritium inventory management and modelling
- WP3: Dosimetry, risk assessment and radiation protection following accidental exposure to tritiated dust
Communication and dissemination of the work is of key importance, with a dedicated work-package to spread the knowledge gained to the various scientific communities and train young or new researchers and engineers to the specificities of tritium via webinars or organization of a Tritium School in Hybrid mode.
