The tritium facilities recently celebrated a significant safety milestone – 20 million hours of operating without a tritium assimilation. The last tritium assimilation occurred in 1985. Marty Schoenbauer, NA-10 Principal Assistant Deputy Administrator for Operations, visited SRS to help mark this achievement, 20 million hours of assimilation-free operations.

Tritium assimilations were once thought to be a reality of handling tritium. In the early 1980s, the facilities averaged two to three assimilation events each year. In 1984, Tritium Facility management committed to the goal of eliminating tritium assimilations.

The greatest risk of exposure was from tritiated water that was inadvertently produced in the processes of the older facilities, which used once-through ventilation systems and radiological hoods to control tritium releases. To address the problem of assimilations, workforce teams revised work practices and tritiated water detection and removal methods to reduce risks of exposure to workers. These new practices either reduced the potential for producing tritiated water in the process or, via enhanced detection methods, removed it from piping or equipment prior to breaching the process boundary. These practices were incorporated into the design of the replacement facilities and projects (i.e., Replacement Tritium Facility, Tritium Consolidation and Modernization Project, and the Tritium Extraction Facility). This significantly reduced environmental emissions.