Tritium Production for Nuclear Fusion Reactors

🔬 The fusion reaction requires deuterium and tritium as fuels.

🌍💡 Deuterium is abundant in nature, while tritium needs to be produced in nuclear fusion reactors using lithium.

⚛️ Tritium is generated through a nuclear reaction between deuterium and lithium, resulting in a helium atom and a neutron.

🔑 The most commonly used reaction to produce tritium in a fusion reactor is the collision between a neutron and a nucleus of lithium six.

🔑 Neutron multipliers like beryllium or lead are used to compensate for the neutron deficiency in tritium breeding.

🔑 Iter does not produce all the tritium it needs and extracts it from fission reactors like Canadian CANDU reactors.

💧 Heavy water with deuterium atoms transforms into tritium through nuclear fission reactions in CANDU reactors.

🔬 To produce tritium for future use in ITER, a breeding blanket is needed to transform lithium into tritium.

🧪 There are two types of breeders, ceramic and liquid, and two types of coolants, water and helium, in tritium production.

💡 ITER will test different concepts for tritium extraction and cooling systems.

🌍 ITER offers a unique opportunity to validate test blanket systems for future fusion reactors.

🔬 ITER provides fundamental knowledge in plasma physics and engineering for future fusion reactors.

🔑 The process of obtaining tritium for nuclear reactions involves extracting it from ceramic or lithium-lead using helium gas.

💧 The tritium is then transformed into tritiated water, which can be stored or returned to the chamber for fusion reactions.

🔬 Lithium-6 enrichment technologies, such as COLEX, are used to enrich lithium for fusion reactors, with enrichment levels ranging from 30% to 90%.

💡 ITER will test different aspects of tritium production and extraction capacity.

⚛️ Neutron models and codes for tritium breeding will be validated through ITER.

🔬 Dedicated facilities like IFMIF and DONES will be used to test materials under neutron damage conditions.

☢️ ITER has a small amount of tritium stored for safety purposes.

💡 A commercial reactor needs 400g of deuterium and 700g of tritium per day.

⚛️ Tritium, a key element in fusion reactors, will be produced and processed in the Tritium Plant in ITER.

🔬 The goal in ITER is to keep the tritium inventory as low as possible through regular regeneration of the plasma chamber.

🌏 Tungsten is being studied as a plasma-facing material in ITER due to its advantage of not depositing tritium.