Tritium management in fusion synfuel designs

Two blanket types are being studied: a lithium-sodium pool boiler and a lithium-oxide- or lithium-sodium pool boiler and a lithium-oxide- or aluminate-microsphere moving bed. For each, a wide variety of current technology was considered in handling the tritium. Here, we show the pool boiler with the sulfur-iodine thermochemical cycle first developed and now being piloted by the General Atomic Company. The tritium (T2) will be generated in the lithium-sodium mixture where the concentration is approx. 10 ppM and held constant by a scavenging system consisting mainly of permeators. An intermediate sodium loop carries the blanket heat to the thermochemical cycle, and the T2 in this loop is held to 1 ppM by a similar scavenging system. With this design, we have maintained blanket inventory at 1 kg of tritium, kept thermochemical cycle losses to 5 Ci/d and environmental loss to 10 Ci/d, and held total plant risk inventory at 7 kg tritium