Savannah River heavy-water plant

Batch electrolysis was used to concentrate deuterium from 90 to 99.87 percent at the large Savannah River heavy-water plant of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, at Aiken, South Carolina [B7, B8], but this final concentration step is not needed when the plant is operated at reduced capacity. 

In the heavy-water plants constmcted at Savannah River and at Dana, these considerations led to designs in which the relatively economical GS process was used to concentrate the deuterium content of natural water to about 15 mol %. Vacuum distillation of water was selected (because there is Httle likelihood of product loss) for the additional concentration of the GS product from 15 to 90% D2O, and an electrolytic process was used to produce the final reactor-grade concentrate of 99.75% D2O. 

The facilities at Savannah River(j)) consist of five heavy-water-moderated and cooled production reactors, two chemical separations areas as a heavy water extraction plant, several test reactors, reactor fuel and target processing facilities, the Savannah River Laboratory, and many other facilities necessary to support the operations. During the 1960 s, two of the... 

Heavy water [11105-15-0], D20, was produced by a combination of electrolysis and catalytic exchange reactions. Some nuclear reactors (qv) require heavy water as a moderator of neutrons. Plants for the production of heavy water were built by the U.S. government during Wodd War II. These plants, located at Trail, British Columbia, Moigantown, West Virginia, and Savannah River, South Carolina, have been shut down except for a portion of the Savannah River plant, which produces heavy water by a three-stage process (see Deuterium and tritium) an H2S/H2O exchange process produces 15% D20 a vacuum distillation increases the concentration to 90% D20 an electrolysis system produces 99.75% D20 (58). 

The first dual-temperature plant for the Manhattan District Heavy Water program was built at Dana and the second at Savannah River. The process was known as GS process (Girdler-Sulfide or Girdler-Spevack). A very simplified flow sheet of this process resembles Fig. 3C. 

Heavy water from the Savannah River plant was sold by the U.S. AEC in the 1960s for a price of 61.73/kg. Demand for heavy water subsequently decreased, and two of the three original wings of the plant were shut down. In 1976, when one wing was operating at its full... 

Natural water contains 0.000149 atom fraction of deuterium. When water is decomposed by electrolysis (10) into hydrogen and oxygen, the deuterium concentration in the hydrogen produced at the cathode is lower than that in the water remaining in the air. Until 19S3 when the Savannah River Plant was built, this process was the only commercial source of heavy water. 

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