Document Type : Research Article
Authors
1 Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Arak University, Arak, Iran
2 Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran
Abstract
In this work, the concentration of tritium in D2O of various degrees of purity was measured. Samples were taken from the Arak heavy water plant and tritium concentrations were determined using a liquid scintillation detector (LSC) based on tritium decay. In this work, instead of simple distillation, is used the azeotropic distillation method. Absorption and fluorescence spectra were recorded using a Shimadzu UV-2100 spectrometer and an LS50B fluorescence spectrometer. The tritium concentration in the samples varied from 1.75 ± 0.80 to 6.16 ± 1.01 Bq.L-1 in D2O enrichment from 0.35% to 77.50%. The correlation coefficient between tritium concentration and D2O purity in heavy water was obtained as R2 = 0.853. Deviation for 99.8% D2O enriched in heavy water. This was observed from a straight line, leading to a drop in R2. The results of this measurement showed that the tritium concentration did not exceed the value set by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
Highlights
- Measurement of tritium concentration in heavy water by azeotropic distillation for the first time in Iran.
- Comparison of the results with the NRC.
- Examining the changes in tritium concentration with increasing degree of enrichment of heavy water.
- Drowning regression line for tritium concentration in heavy water purity
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