Learning from the Karlsruhe Tritium Lab
16 Mar 2009
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Sabina Griffith
Lothar Dörr (centre), Head of the Tritium Lab, explains the tritium fuel cycle and the principle of the glove boxes to Neil Calder, Head of ITER Communication Office (right). Beate Bornschein, Deputy Head of TLK, and Manfred Glugla, ITER Tritium Plant Division Leader listen in. The CAPER experiment comprises a torus mockup section to produce the tritiated gases resulting from the operation of ITER.
Last week, members of the ITER Tritium Division and Communication Office visited the Tritium Laboratory (TLK) in Karlsruhe, Germany. The Karlsruhe Tritium Lab is the only scientific laboratory in Europe able to handle tritium in technical amounts for fusion-related applications. It has a lot of similarities with the future ITER tritium plant. The tritium technology developed at TLK comprises areas such as efficient tritium recovery and minimization of waste, tritium storage and accountancy, detritiation of materials, development and optimization of tritium analytics, and safety improvements.
Group photo outside of the Karlsruhe Tritium Lab.