Fusion reactor fuel cycle

Basile, A. et al., Membrane integrated system in the fusion reactor fuel cycle. Catalysis Today, 25, 321, 1995. 

Moreover, there is a potential application of polymeric membranes for integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plants, some aspects of the integration of a membrane reactor with a fuel cell, the possibility to integrate a membrane reformer into a solar system, and the potential application of membrane integrated systems in the fusion reactor fuel cycle, which are attracting many scientists and so will also be introduced and discussed in this chapter. 

Membrane integrated system in the fusion reactor fuel cycle... 

Violante, V., Basile, A., Drioh, E. (1993). Membrane separation technologies their apph-cation to the fusion reactor fuel cycle. Fusion Engineering and Design, 22, 257. 

A potential application of the WGS reaction carried out in an MR is represented by the tritium recovery process from tritiated water from breeder blanket fluids in fusion reactor systems. The hydrogen isotopes separation at low concentration in gaseous mixtures is a typical problem of the fusion reactor fuel cycle. In fact, the tritium produced in the breeder needs a proper extraction process to reach the required purity level. Yoshida et al. (1984) carried out experimental and theoretical studies of a catalytic reduction method which allows tritium recovery from tritiated water with a high conversion value (> 99.99%) at a relatively low temperature, while Hsu and Buxbaum (1986) studied a palladium-catalysed oxidative diffusion... 

The development of a tritium fuel cycle for fusion reactors is likely to be the focus of tritium chemical research into the twenty-first century. 

Thus, the D-T-Li fuel cycle is, in spite of its drawbacks, the most likely one to be used in the first fusion reactors. It fulfills the requirement of being an inexhaustible energy source since the available lithium resources which represent the limiting factor should be sufficient to meet the future world energy demands for thousands of years5). 

This chapter gives a brief account of the nuclear fission reaction and the most important fissile fuels. It continues with a short description of a typical nuclear power plant and outlines the characteristics of the principal reactor types proposed for nuclear power generation. It sketches the principal fuel cycles for nuclear power plants and points out the chemical engineering processes needed to make these fuel cycles feasible and economical. The chapter concludes with an outline of another process that may some day become of practical importance for the production of power the controlled fusion of light elements. The fusion process makes use of rare isotopes of hydrogen and lithium, which may be produced by isotop>e separation methods analogous to those used for materials for fission reactors. As isotope separation processes are of such importance in nuclear chemical engineering, they are discussed briefly in this chapter and in some detail in the last three chapters of this book. 

V. Violante, A. Basile, E. Drioli, Composite catalytic membrane reactor analysis for the water gas shift reaction in the tritium fusion fuel cycle. Fusion Eng. Des. 30 (1995) 217-223. 

Tosti S, Violante V, Basile A, Chiappetta G, CastelU S, De Francesco M, Scaglione S, Sarto F (2000) Catalytic memlnane reactors Tot tritium recovery fiom tritiated water in the ITER fuel cycle. Fusion Eng Des 49-50 953-958... 

The main applications are concerned with the production of ultra-pure hydrogen for laboratory and small scale electrolysers and the processing of tritiated water. Recent studies into alkahne electrolysis cells using thin-wall Pd-Ag tubes have demonstrated the applicabihty of these technologies for commercial hydrogen electrolysers. Other tests have verified the use of these hollow cathode cells for recovering tritium from tritiated water in the fuel cycle of the next fusion reactors. 

The temporal evolution of this exchange can easily be followed (but is not shown here). This is just one example demonstrating that chemical reactions and processes can be monitored using Raman spectroscopy. For example, Raman detection of the composition and the generation of contamination products has been applied in the ITER fusion reactor. For its efficient operation, the purity of the injected D2 T2 fuel is important contamination reactions with H2 in the system (through outgassing from vessel walls) were monitored and the results used in the initiation of purification cycles. 

Greenspan, "Confinement Approaches for Burning Alternate Fuels," Fourth Topical Meeting, Technology of Controlled Nuclear Fusion, King of Prussia, PA (1980), p. 270. Rikihisa, H. Nakashima, and M. Ohta, "Characteristics of Advanced-Fuel Cycle for Base-Satellite Fusion Reactor System," Proc. 2nd Int. Conf. on Emerging Concepts in Nuclear Energy, Lausanne, Switzerland (April 1980). 

Other studies on Nb-based membranes have been developed and proposed for the separation of hydrogen isotopes (deuterium and tritium) from He in the fuel cycle of fusion reactors. As mentioned in previous sections. 

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