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Tritium control in a mirror-fusion central power station

Conference ·
OSTI ID:7344099

Tritium-containment systems for the blanket and power systems of a mirror-fusion reactor are described. These systems are designed to reduce emissions to below 1 Ci/d. The overall conceptual design uses air as the reactor-hall atmosphere. A continuous catalytic oxidizer-molecular sieve adsorber cleanup system would be used to control a 180-Ci/d leakage from reactor components, energy recovery systems, and process piping. Such a system would maintain a 40 ..mu..Ci/m/sup 3/ tritium level (5 ..mu..Ci/m/sup 3/ HTO) in the hall. The blanket considered contains submodules with Li/sub 2/Be/sub 2/O/sub 3/-Be for tritium breeding. This canned breeding material is scavenged with a lithium-vapor-doped helium gas stream. The container consists of molybdenum alloy (TZM) tubes and tube sheets with the breeding material packed and sintered in the shell surrounding the tubes. Potassium vapor coolant (also lithium-doped) passes through these tubes to recover the heat at 950/sup 0/C. Leakage following an intermediate TZM exchanger would result in a loss of 0.7 Ci/d into the steam through the Haynes-25 alloy boiler (potassium boiling). A moving getter bed is used to recover the tritium from the LiT and Li/sub 2/T scavengers in both the helium blanket scavenging flow and the potassium vapor coolant.

Research Organization:
California Univ., Livermore (USA). Lawrence Livermore Lab.
DOE Contract Number:
W-7405-ENG-48
OSTI ID:
7344099
Report Number(s):
UCRL-78586; CONF-760935-21
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English