Preliminary design of experiments to test tritium breeding capability for the water cooled ceramic blanket concept

Abstract

The breeding blanket is a core component in future D-T fusion reactors to ensure the tritium self-sufficiency. In order to accurately assess the tritium breeding capability, it is essential to understand the process of the tritium production and release behavior in the blanket. WCCB (Water cooled ceramic blanket) with the lithium titanate pebbles as the breeding material is one of the candidate blankets for CFETR (Chinese Fusion Engineering Test Reactor). Based on the WCCB concept, a small breeding blanket module is proposed to mimic the geometrical configuration and to conduct irradiation experiments with a 14 MeV D–T neutron source. The lithium glass detector will be placed inside the breeding zone to measure the tritium production rate (TPR) in situ. Part of Li₂TiO₃ pebbles will be individually packed to allow further offline measurement for the tritium production so that the dimensions of mock-up have been optimized to produce enough tritium to be measurable. The spatial distribution of tritium production and the activation of the mockup post irradiation have been evaluated for the design optimization of the experiment. The power deposition in the mockup has been calculated and it proved the temperature variation is negligible inside the mock-up in response of the neutron irradiation.