ITER task T26/28 (1994): preliminary results on the solubility, diffusion and permeability of hydrogen isotopes in potentional fusion reactor ceramics

Ceramic insulators are integral parts of numerous components essential for the heating, control and diagnostic measurement of fusion plasmas. For safe and reliable reactor operations it is important to be able to predict the resultant tritium inventories and permeation fluxes. Currently there is little or no published data on tritium behaviour in AlN. This report contains the preliminary results of work begun in 1994 on ITER task T26/28. The ceramics studied in 1994 were AlN and Al2O3. Section 2.1 reports on the measurements of permeation through an AlN film on a vanadium substrate, with supplementary Rutherford backscattering measurements of the surface composition, before and after permeation. Section 2.2 deals with ion-beam analysis of hydrogen and deuterium in sapphire and alumina, before and after room temperature implantation of deuterium, with careful attention to the effects of the analysis ions upon the data; section 2.3 looks at the data in 2.2 from the perspective of ion-beam-induced desorption; and in section 2.4 a thermal desorption measurement is reported for comparison. The numbers derived include effective diffusivities and, in the case of AlN, an estimated solubility, for hydrogen isotopes. 16 refs., 1 tab., 12 figs