Future deuterium-tritium fueled fusion power plants must breed tritium and sustain a burning plasma using a semi-closed loop fuel cycle. The DT fusion fuel cycle is an important aspect of any fusion energy configuration whose purpose is to provide fuel to the plasma, pump and separate plasma exhaust products, and recover fuel from breeding and plasma exhaust products. The current method of...
The fuel cycle of the European DEMO reactor comprises three loops, where the first two – the Direct Internal Recycling (DIRL) and the Inner Tritium Plant (INTL) Loop – are directly coupled to the reactor. These loops include components that act as actuators on the plasma, as vacuum pumps, pellet injectors or gas injection valves that can and must be controlled on a given timescale.
This...
The minimization of the Fuel Cycle inventory in a pulsed DEMO-like power reactor can be provided in the Direct Internal Recycling (DIR) concept by adding an additional short-cut between the pumped torus exhaust gas and the fuelling systems [1]. The Fuel Cycle which includes plasma fuelling and exhaust, as well as several exhaust processing and isotope separation processes, is one of the key...
Since the beginning of the nuclear era, Canada has been a leader in the area of deuterium and tritium technologies. CANDU nuclear power stations use deuterium oxide to enable a chain reaction of fission in natural uranium, thereby requiring the development of deuterium oxide production and management. Neutron capture by deuterium leads to formation of tritiated deuterium oxide in CANDU...
Recently, as many countries are developing their demonstration fusion plant, Korea has also begun developing the Korean-style demonstration fusion plant. For the fuel cycle design, the handling of a large amount of tritium is an essential problem to be solved. Several activities related to process modeling and simulation are in progress for process design optimization and tritium inventory...
Significant production of radioactive metal dust, mainly due to erosion of plasma facing components, is expected to be present in the vacuum vessel of DEMO while it is operating. A relevant tritium content is expected to be present in this dust. Therefore, the removal of tritium and the management of this radioactive dust for safety reasons and for eventual remanufacturing or appropriate...
Tritium permeation from Breeding Blanket (BB) towards Primary Heat Transfer System (PHTS) constitutes a relevant issue for operation of DEMO machine. As a matter of fact, once permeated into PHTS, tritium can migrate to working areas and environment via permeation and leaks. In order to control radioactive release, tritium concentration within primary coolant must be kept below fixed limits....
When a plasma experiment using deuterium (D) gas is conducted in a large fusion test device, a small amount of tritium is produced in the plasma. The produced tritium can be used to evaluate tritium behavior and inventory in fusion systems as a tracer because of its small amount. As one of the large fusion test devices, the deuterium plasma experiment with the Large Helical Device (LHD) have...
DTT (Divertor Tokamak Test Facility) is a new facility, currently under build, in which various scaled experiments for testing different magnetic configurations and alternative solutions for the power exhaust system of DEMO will be performed. Although the divertor system is not finalized yet, the machine and port geometry set limitations on the divertor pumping system operational space. In the...
The Diagnostic Residual Gas Analyzer (DRGA), an integrated, multi-sensor diagnostic system, will access and sample the ITER sub-divertor region, in the ducts of the cryogenic pumps, out-of-site of the main plasma chamber. It will deliver time resolved neutral gas composition measurements directly related to fuel cycle processes in the core plasma, in plasma-wall equilibration timescales [1,...
