Speaker
Irina Tazhibayeva
(Insitute of Atomic Energy NNC RK)
Description
Tritium is a prospect fuel material for future fusion power reactors, thus tritium breeding in these reactors is one of the design challenges, which can be solved by using the lithium-containing materials for contrstruction of the reactors’ blankets. Also of great interest is use of lithium as a plasma-facing material, for example, in the form of lithium-capillary porous systems (CPS). Such systems showed promising results during numerous experiments at plasma accelerators and under conditions of operating tokamaks.
To use lithium in fusion reactors it is necessary to estimate the parameters of hydrogen isotopes recycling in fusion reactor's chamber taking into account the processes of sorption and desorption by the chamber’s lithium surfaces. Also it is important to take into account the processes of tritium recovery in lithium under neutron irradiation.
The paper provides an overview and analysis of the experimental results on study of tritium and helium generation and release from the following lithium-containing materials: lithium, lithium CPS, lead-lithium eutectic (83%Pb+17%Li), lithium ceramics (Li2TiO3) under reactor irradiation at the reactors IVG1.M and WWR-K (Kazakhstan).
The following general patterns have been revealed during these experiments:
For all lithium-containing materials a significant contribution into overall tritium yield is made by release of fast atoms formed in the surface layer due to the nuclear reaction 6Li(n,α)33H.
For lithium-containing materials release of helium atoms exceeded of tritium ones, given that helium is inert, does not react with the atoms of other materials, and has a substantially activationless character of desorption with material open surface.
Analysis of the temperature dependences of tritium flow from the samples showed that the most important process affecting tritium release is its interaction with lithium atoms, which results in formation (decomposition) of lithium tritide LiT.
Co-authors
Evgeniy Chikhray
(Research Institute of Experimental and Theoretical Physics KazNU, 71 al-Farabi Ave., 050040, Almaty, Kazakhstan)
Irina Tazhibayeva
(Insitute of Atomic Energy NNC RK, st.Krasnoarmeyskaya, 2 buil.54 B, 071100, Kurchatov, Kazakhstan)
Mazhyn Skakov
(Insitute of Atomic Energy NNC RK, st.Krasnoarmeyskaya, 2 buil.54 B, 071100, Kurchatov, Kazakhstan)
Timur Kulsartov
(Research Institute of Experimental and Theoretical Physics KazNU, 71 al-Farabi Ave., 050040, Almaty, Kazakhstan)
Victor Baklanov
(Insitute of Atomic Energy NNC RK, st.Krasnoarmeyskaya, 2 buil.54 B, 071100, Kurchatov, Kazakhstan)
Vyacheslav Gnyrya
(Insitute of Atomic Energy NNC RK, st.Krasnoarmeyskaya, 2 buil.54 B, 071100, Kurchatov, Kazakhstan)
Yuri Gordienko
(Insitute of Atomic Energy NNC RK, st.Krasnoarmeyskaya, 2 buil.54 B, 071100, Kurchatov, Kazakhstan)
Yuri Ponkratov
(Insitute of Atomic Energy NNC RK, st.Krasnoarmeyskaya, 2 buil.54 B, 071100, Kurchatov, Kazakhstan)
Zhanna Zaurbekova
(Insitute of Atomic Energy NNC RK, st.Krasnoarmeyskaya, 2 buil.54 B, 071100, Kurchatov, Kazakhstan)
