Abstract
Fusion facility not only uses large amount of tritium, its temperature ranges from solid to hot fusion plasma region, and the concentration varies from background level to pure tritium. Even a well designed and operated facility, small but certain amount of tritium is steadily released by normal operation for extended period of time. If fusion is to be one of the viable energy sources of mankind, number of the facilities would be comparable with that of current nuclear generation stations. Even far below the legal limit of quantity and concentration, this tritium will diversely distribute in the environment and biosphere, and be accumulated for extended period of time. Thus the feasibility of fusion as energy source strongly depends on the fact that this envirfonmental tritium release from fusion facility would be socially understood and accepted. Future environmental tritium distribution and its behavior could be drastically changed by the use of fusion, and tritium could be one of the most important nuclides.
Radiological hazard of fusion facility is not extremely large, however fusion maintain its safety by active operation of the detritiation systems continuously operated. Technological facility and equipments has a strong impact on the release mode, chemical species and its paths of the tritium released both normal and off-normal events. While evaluation and understanding on the environmental behavior and biological effect of tritium may control the feasibility of the fusion as energy source, these askects will be reflected in the design of the process and facility. In this workshop, handling and confinement of tritium in the facility will be presented as a major source term, and at the same time, possible suggestions and influence from the current environmental and biological research on the facility concept would be considered.
