Original Articles: 2012 Vol: 4 Issue: 4
Extraction of Tritium from ceramic breeder material
Abstract
The Fusion reactors will use deuterium and tritium as fuel since this reaction takes place at relatively low temperature. Tritium is not available in nature, it must be produced in the fusion reactor blanket which surrounds the plasma zone. The lithium bearing compound is available in plenty in earth’s crust and by absorbing neutron, lithium produces tritium two reactions. So by designing the lithium blanket, more than one tritium atom per fusion reaction can be produced. In the absence of thermonuclear reactions, the (D,T) neutrons which are energetic 14- MeV neutrons, are produced in the accelerator based neutron generators. In order to ensure that sufficient amount of tritium would be produced in the future fusion reactor blankets, experiments are carried out to irradiate the lithium assembly using the available neutron source and measurements are done to estimate the tritium breeding. Also, it is required to extract the tritium produced in the lithium blanket. This work consists of designing of tritium extraction system.