Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A rare radioactive isotope of hydrogen, H-3, having one proton and two neutrons in the nucleus and a half-life of 12.3 years, prepared artificially for use as a tracer and as a constituent of hydrogen bombs.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Chem.) A radioactive isotope of hydrogen having one proton and two neutrons in the nucleus. It decays spontaneously to Helium-3 by the emission of an electron (beta ray), with a half-life of 12.3 years. Symbol 1H3. Atomic weight 3.01605 (C-12 = 12.0000). It is one of the radioisotopes commonly used to label chemical compounds for use as tracers in biochemistry and chemistry. It is also used as one of the fusionable components of a hydrogen bomb.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun physics A radioactive isotope of the element hydrogen, (symbol T or 31H), having one proton and two neutrons.
  • noun An atom of this isotope.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a radioactive isotope of hydrogen; atoms of tritium have three times the mass of ordinary hydrogen atoms

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Greek tritos, third; see trei- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek τρίτος (tritos, "third") +‎ -ium.

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Examples

  • The worlds main source of tritium is Canada, Ontario actually.

    Tuesday Trivia 2008

  • The experiments also yielded a radioactive material called tritium, which is another product of fusion, Xu and Butt said.

    Tabletop Nuclear Fusion | Impact Lab 2005

  • Last July, months before most Vermonters had heard the word tritium, Gundersen was poring over a Nuclear Regulatory Commission report when a mention of underground pipes at Vermont Yankee caught his attention.

    burlingtonfreepress.com - 2010

  • Last July, months before most Vermonters had heard the word tritium, Gundersen was poring over a Nuclear Regulatory Commission report when a mention of underground pipes at Vermont Yankee caught his attention.

    burlingtonfreepress.com - 2010

  • With the radiation inside the reactor, some of the deuterium turns into a still heavier form of hydrogen called tritium, which is radioactive.

    The Hindu - Front Page 2009

  • However, the rods cannot fully contain the tritium, which is permeating into the reactor cooling system, approaching safety limits set by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

    Robert Alvarez: Future Supply of New Tritium Explosive for U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Doubt Robert Alvarez 2010

  • This last form of hydrogen, often called tritium, is unstable and therefore radioactive.

    Isotope 2009

  • This last form of hydrogen, often called tritium, is unstable and therefore radioactive.

    Elements 2009

  • Since this is only the world's largest nuke complex, with only seven reactors on site, and only several hundred barrels of nuke waste tipped over, and far fewer had their lids fly off, and the gas emissions the utility lied about were only tritium, which is less deadly than plutonium, the fact that all of Japan was not engulfed in a catastrophic radiation release (yet) will be used to sell more reactors.

    Harvey Wasserman: PR Nuke Flacks Do the Kashiwazaki Quake Death Spin 2008

  • During the CANDU process, the water picks up tritium, which is separated from the water at

    The Globe and Mail - Home RSS feed MARIA BABBAGE 2011

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