EVALUATION OF ALTERNATE STAINLESS STEEL SURFACE TREATMENTS FOR MASS SPECTROSCOPY AND OTHER TRITIUM SYSTEMS

There are specific components in the SRS Tritium Facilities that are required to introduce as few chemical impurities (such as protium and methane) as possible into the process gas. Two such components are the inlet systems for the mass spectroscopy facilities and hydrogen isotope mix standard containers. Two vendors now passivate stainless steel components for these systems, and both are relatively small businesses whose future viability can be questioned, which creates the need for new sources. Stainless steel containers were designed to evaluate alternate surface treatment vendors for tritium storage and handling for these high purity tritium systems. Five vendors applied their own 'best' surface treatments to two containers each - one was a current vendor, another was a chemical vapor deposited silicon coating, and the other three were electropolishing and chemical cleaning vendors. Pure tritium gas was introduced into all ten containers and the composition was monitored over time. The only observed impurities in the gas were some HT, less CT{sub 4}, and very small amounts of T{sub 2}O in all cases. The currently used vendor treated containers contained the least impurities. The chemical vapor deposited silicon treatment resulted in the highest impurity levels. Sampling one set of containers after about one month of tritium exposure revealed the impurity level to be nearly the same as that after more than a year of exposure - this result suggests that cleaning new stainless steel components by tritium gas contact for about a month may be a worthy operation