Understanding the role of helium in tritium breeder materials for fusion

本项目的目的是确定氦对氚在含锂陶瓷材料中扩散的影响。锂陶瓷是聚变反应堆堆芯周围氚增殖包层材料的候选材料。在增殖包层中，氚将通过捕获聚变中子后锂的变形而产生。氚的产生也会导致氦原子的形成。关于氚和氦在预测的增殖包层工作温度下将如何相互作用，特别是氦原子是否会捕获氚，从而减少氚从包层中扩散/提取，在实验上知之甚少。减少氚扩散/提取将降低反应堆效率并影响增殖包层的寿命。将采用一系列实验，包括辐照实验和最先进的表征技术，来确定增殖包层的成分和微观结构对氦-氚相互作用的依赖关系。

The aim of this project is to determine the effect of helium on the diffusion of tritium in Li-containing ceramic materials. Li-ceramics are candidates for the tritium breeder blanket material surrounding a fusion reactor core. In the breeder blanket, tritium will be produced by the transmutation of lithium following capture of a fusion neutron. The production of tritium also results in the formation of helium atoms. Little is known experimentally about how tritium and helium will interact at predicted breeder blanket operating temperatures, specifically, whether helium atoms will trap tritium and consequently reduce tritium diffusion/extraction out of the blanket. Reduction in tritium diffusion/extraction would reduce reactor efficiency and affect the life-time of the breeder blanket.A programme of experiments, including irradiation experiments and state of the art characterisation techniques, will be employed to determine the dependence of breeder blanket composition and microstructure on helium-tritium interactions.