Quality Assurance and Chain of Custody
Strategic isotopes require verified quality and unbroken custody, so that what is delivered is exactly what records say, at the specified grade.
Two guarantees at once
Strategic isotope supply must guarantee two things: the material meets specification (quality assurance) and its custody is unbroken and documented (chain of custody). Together they ensure that a user receives the right material at the right grade, with a verifiable record of where it has been.
What each guarantees
- Quality assurance: isotopic purity and contaminant limits verified.
- Chain of custody: every transfer logged and reconciled.
- Decay correction: quantities checked against known decay.
- Traceability: facility, batch, and item records nested together.
For decaying isotopes, quality and custody include decay correction, since the quantity changes continuously. A well-run system reconciles measured inventory against the decay curve at each transfer, so any genuine discrepancy stands out immediately from expected decay.
A responsible standard
Decay-aware custody
What distinguishes custody for these isotopes is that it must be decay-aware. Because a tritium quantity changes continuously, each transfer reconciles the measured amount against the decay curve, so that a genuine discrepancy is visible against expected decay rather than hidden by it. Nested records — facility, batch, and item — provide traceability from the whole inventory down to an individual container, and quality assurance verifies purity and contaminant limits at each step. Together, decay-aware custody and grade verification ensure a user receives exactly the material the records describe, at the specified grade, with a defensible history.
Any isotope service the breeder is studied to provide is intended to follow established quality-assurance and custody practice. These are design-stage commitments; demonstrated conformance is a FOAK-era result reported honestly, with no economic content attached.