Patent ID: 8821824

Claim:
A process for the detritiation of radioactive waste containing tritium, comprising: carrying out a thermal desorption by subjecting said waste, placed in a detritiation reactor (RT), to a flow of moist gas and subsequently recovering tritium in the form of gas by means of a membrane reactor (RM) in order to valorize the tritium for re-use, the thermal desorption comprising the following sub-steps: A) shredding and uniformly mixing the waste to be detritiated; B) placing said waste in a detritiation reactor (RT); C) sending inert gas and demineralized water to an evaporation/mixing device; D) feeding a moist gaseous mixture, constituted by said inert gas and vapour formed from said demineralized water, to said detritiation reactor (RT) so that said moist gaseous mixture traverses all the waste, giving rise to a formation of a moist gaseous current containing tritium; E) sending said gaseous current containing tritium to a membrane reactor (RM); and F) feeding said membrane reactor (RM) with a swamping gas, thus obtaining exit from the membrane reactor (RM) itself, as end products, of a gaseous current of isotopes containing tritium extracted from the waste and of a gaseous current of detritiated gases.