Determination of tritium in mercury from sprengel pumps

• Published in: Journal of nuclear materials 1990-07, Vol.172 (2), p.239-240
• Main Authors: Tsugawa, R.T., Bowers, J.S., Emig, J.A., Hafner, R.S., Maienschein, J.L., Nicolosi, A.S.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0022-3115; 1873-4820
• DOI: 10.1016/0022-3115(90)90443-Q

Sprengel and Hg diffusion pumps are used in tritium technology for moving the gas from one system to another. Both generate T contaminated Hg, which is a concern because of recent environmental issues. Both the filtered Hg and the residue from Sprengel pumps are sufficiently low in activity to be handled as low-level mixed waste, but not low enough to be classified as non-radioactive toxic waste. About 600 kg of tritiated pump Hg was contained in steel jugs. To remove the slag on top of the liquid, Hg was siphoned using a vacuum pump. The Hg flowed through a glass or stainless steel frit, across which most of the pump pressure was applied. A flask followed by a carbon/sulfur mercury filter protected vacuum pump from the Hg. Two methods were used to quantitate the filtered Hg. The first, which was more convenient, involved dissolution of the filtered Hg in nitric acid. The second method involved the physical extraction of the T from the filtered Hg. The nitric acid method was used for the analyses of the filtration residue. 1 ref.--A.R.