AbstractThe European Tritium Handling Experimental Laboratory (ETHEL) is the new tritium facility of the Commission of the European Communities aimed at handling multigram amounts of tritium for safety-related R&D purposes. The laboratory, located at the Joint Research Centre, Ispra site (Italy), is foreseen to start radioactive operation in 1992. The paper describes the operational criteria and conditioning procedures whose application is inteded for implementing the safe management of tritiated wastes expected from ETHEL.