A comprehensive model for the prediction of tritium behavior in solid breeder materials during steady-state and transient conditions

Thesis/Dissertation · Sun Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1989

OSTI ID:6350917

Federici, G

In recent years, the area of tritium transport and release from Li-base ceramics in fusion blankets has become increasingly important particularly in conjunction with the growing amount of data available from in-pile tritium recovery experiments. Key variables that can strongly affect the tritium inventory and the kinetics of release, such as purge gas composition, temperature, solid breeder microstructure and activation energies for bulk diffusion and for desorption have been identified. Therefore, in the current phase of research and development, there is a strong incentive to develop comprehensive predictive capabilities in order to understand the new experimental data, to extrapolate these data to different ranges of conditions of interest, and to provide a necessary tool for fusion blanket design analysis. The objectives of this research are: (1) to develop new models for tritium transport in solid breeders to better describe the complex multistep phenomena that characterize tritium release, (2) to develop a computer code to predict tritium behavior, as a function of different variables and for a wide range of operating conditions, (3) to calibrate such models with existing experimental results. A comprehensive model is proposed. The sequence of transport processes leading to tritium release includes diffusion through the grain and along the grain boundaries, adsorption and desorption at the breeder surface and diffusion through the pore. A computer code called MISTRAL has been developed based on this model. The results obtained are in reasonable agreement with the experimental results, for the available set of property data, and indicate a fairly good predictive capability of the model for the analysis of several transients of interest for solid breeder fusion blankets.

• Research Organization: California Univ., Los Angeles, CA (USA)
• OSTI ID: 6350917
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
360204 -- Ceramics
Cermets
& Refractories-- Physical Properties
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
700201* -- Fusion Power Plant Technology-- Blanket Engineering
ACTIVATION ENERGY
ATOM TRANSPORT
BETA DECAY RADIOISOTOPES
BETA-MINUS DECAY RADIOISOTOPES
BREEDING BLANKETS
CERAMICS
COMPUTER CODES
CRYSTAL STRUCTURE
DESIGN
DESORPTION
DIFFUSION
ENERGY
GRAIN BOUNDARIES
HYDROGEN ISOTOPES
INVENTORIES
ISOTOPES
LIGHT NUCLEI
M CODES
MATERIALS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
MICROSTRUCTURE
NEUTRAL-PARTICLE TRANSPORT
NUCLEI
ODD-EVEN NUCLEI
RADIATION TRANSPORT
RADIOISOTOPES
REACTOR COMPONENTS
RECOVERY
SORPTIVE PROPERTIES
SURFACE PROPERTIES
THERMONUCLEAR REACTOR MATERIALS
TRITIUM
TRITIUM RECOVERY
YEARS LIVING RADIOISOTOPES