Impact of solid breeder materials on tritium breeding in a hybrid reactor

Abstract

Tritium breeding ratio (TBR) is one of the important parameters in design of a Deuterium Tritium (DT) driven hybrid reactor. Therefore, selection of tritium breeder materials to be used in the blanket is very crucial. In this study, tritium breeding potential of the solid breeders, namely, Li2O; LiAlO2; Li4SiO4; Li2ZrO3; Li8ZrO6 or Li2TiO3 in a ( DT) fusion driven hybrid reactor fuelled with ThO2 or UO2 was investigated. For this purpose in addition to these solid breeders, different types of liquid breeders, namely natural lithium, Flibe, Flinabe and Li20Sn80 were used to examine the tritium breeding behavior of liquid - solid breeder couple combinations. Numerical calculations were carried out by using Scale 4.3. According to numerical results, the blanket with UO2 fuel using natural lithium as coolant and Li2O as solid breeder had the highest TBR value.