Kurion, Inc. said Monday that it had completed construction and acceptance testing of its prototype Modular Detritiation System and has initiated the system’s mission, which is to push the technology for additional performance through various experiments.
The MDS has completed an extensive cold and hot commissioning phase and is achieving its design goals based on scaling-up its proven bench scale system. This milestone comes less than six months after Kurion announced the development of the prototype system, delivering on patent-pending technology that removes tritium from contaminated water.
Kurion said its MDS is the world’s first solution to process large volumes of light water across a range of concentrations to remove tritium contamination. The system allows for the recycling or clean release of reactor cooling water for light water reactors.
The technology builds upon proven heavy water solutions and applies advances in throughput and efficiency for light water detritiation. Kurion’s MDS is a cost-effective solution to manage tritium and eliminate the release of tritiated water to the environment, the company said. The new system will use a full-scale catalytic exchange column, which is a central facet of Kurion’s technology.
Kurion is currently in discussions with a number of customers domestically and abroad to introduce its mature MDS technology to provide nuclear operators a new tool to manage tritium removal. Interest ranges across both operating and decommissioning plants.
David Carlson, Kurion's senior vide president of the Separation Business Unit, said tritium removal presents a unique cleanup challenge around the globe. “We are working with leading tritium experts and customers globally to achieve this success. We combine more than three decades of innovation and improved economics to provide cost-effective and environmentally friendly technology to remove tritium and improve the environment now and in the future,” he said.