Trail, British Columbia, heavy-water plant

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). 

Because the cost of producing heavy water is roughly inversely proportional to the deuterium content of plant feed, local variations are of major economic importance. The low deuterium content of the Columbia River at Trail, British Columbia, 0.0133 percent, made the cost of producing heavy water at the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission s (AEC) plant at this location higher than if the Columbia River had been as rich in deuterium as the Niagara or the Nile, for example. 

At the Manhattan District s heavy-water plant at Trail, British Columbia, primary concentration of deuterium was effected by the combination of electrolysis and steam-hydrogen... 

The electrolytic process was also used by the Manhattan District, at Morgantown, West Virginia, and at Trail, British Columbia [M8], to refine crude heavy water from a primary plant where some process other than electrolysis was employed. These electrolytic plants were operated batchwise. The cells had no diaphragm, so the product was a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. The gases were recombined in a burner, and the water was recycled to the primary plant when its deuterium content was leaner than primary-plant product or to the next batch of the electrolytic plant when its deuterium content was richer than primary-plant product,... 

At about that point from 1942 to 1943, I was given a special project to design and start-up a heavy water separation plant in Trail, British Columbia. I didn t have much faith that they would get this job done in time for the war. The work was extra confidential. One of the techniques we used involved a layer of catalyst between every two bubble trays. You had to get heavy water in the right phase—it resembled distillation. 

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