Thermonuclear reactors

Tritium is produced in heavy-water-moderated reactors and sometimes must be separated isotopicaHy from hydrogen and deuterium for disposal. Ultimately, the tritium could be used as fuel in thermonuclear reactors (see Fusionenergy). Nuclear fusion reactions that involve tritium occur at the lowest known temperatures for such reactions. One possible reaction using deuterium produces neutrons that can be used to react with a lithium blanket to breed more tritium. 

Energy sources and conversion— biomass, batteries, fuel celts and fuel cell technology, hydrogen as a fuel, liquid and gaseous fuels from coal, oil shale, tar sands, nuclear fission and fusion, lithium lor thermonuclear reactors, insulating materials, and solar energy. 

For practical application in a thermonuclear reactor, it is important to determine whether the total fluence which can be trapped with high efficiency fulfills the requirements placed on a trapping surface. 

Werner, R. W. "The Generation and Recovery of Tritium in Thermonuclear Reactor Blankets " Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Livermore, CA, UCID-15390, 1968. 

According to predictions for the year 2000, the demand for lithium could reach 50,000-70,000 tons per year, in the Western European countries alone.This amounts to an increase by a factor of 10 from the present demand [111]. According to other estimates, the need for Li isotope in one thermonuclear reactor could be about 5000 tons per year [112]. 

Controlled thermonuclear reactors (CTR), also referred to as fusion reactors, are in the development stage. Operation on an industrial scale before the year 2050 is unlikely. 

With respect to the operation of thermonuclear reactors, laser-induced fusion and heavy-ion-induced fusion are also discussed. In these concepts compression of T or D-T mixtures to high density and heating to high temperatures are achieved by irradiation with a laser beam of very high intensity or with a beam of high-energy heavy ions. 

Compared with fission reactors, operation of fusion reactors is more complicated because of the high ignition temperatures, the necessity to confine the plasma, and problems with the construction materials. On the other hand, the radioactive inventory of fusion reactors is appreciably smaller. Fission products are not formed and actinides are absent. The radioactivity in fission reactors is given by the tritium and the activation products produced in the construction materials. This simplifies the waste problems considerably. Development of thermonuclear reactors based on the D-D reaction would reduce the radioactive inventory even further, because T would not be needed. The fact that the energy produced by fusion of the D atoms contained in 1 litre of water corresponds to the energy obtained by burning 120 kg coal is very attractive. 

Massive stars as thermonuclear reactors and their explosions following core collapse... 

D 0.015 1. I>2 0 moderator for natural uranium reactors 2. Fuel for thermonuclear reactors... 

The fission products and Cs can be transformed into shorter lived or stable products by charged particle or neutron irradiation. Charged particle irradiation would be very expensive, and irradiation by reactor neutrons would produce almost as much fission products as are destroyed. Therefore the use of intense accelerator driven spallation neutron sources for transmutation by n-irradiation has been suggested. If controlled thermonuclear reactors (CTR) are developed, their excess neutrons could be used for Sr transformation, but less efficient for Cs. 

The role of liquid sodium as a heat-exchange medium in the fast breeder reactor, and that of liquid lithium as a prime candidate for use as the blanket medium in a deuterium-tritium-fuelled thermonuclear reactor, has maintained interest in the solution chemistry of these liquid metals. 

Enrichment of deuterium in the gaseous phase above dilute Li-UD solutions (xd -10 ) has been observed by Ihle and Wu at temperatures above 1240 K. This supports the contention that deuterium can be removed from highly dilute solutions in Li by distillation. The results are of importance in the context of the technology of thermonuclear reactors and have been extrapolated to U-LiT solutions. "... 

The boron is injected into the patient usually as a carborane (e.g. the ring-compound C2H12B10) which is furnished with two mercapto-groups to give affinity for protein. Although there is 19% of B in natural boric acid (the rest is mainly B), the therapeutic material is further enriched. One hour after the injection, a neutron beam from a thermonuclear reactor is lined up with an appropriately localized hole made in the patient s skull. The pioneer clinical work was done in Tokyo (Hatanaka and Sano, 1973 cf Wong, Tolpin and Lipscomb, 1974). 

Lawson criterion A condition for the release of energy from a thermonuclear reactor first laid down by J. D. Lawsonin 1957. It Is usually stated as the minimum value for the product of the density (Ug) of the fusion-fuel particles and the containment time (t) for energy breakeven, i.e. it is a measure of the density of the reacting particles required and the time for which they need to react in... 

A reactor in which nuclear fusion takes place with the controlled release of energy. Although thermonuclear reactors do not yet exist, intense research in many parts of the world is being carried out with a view to achieving such a machine. There are two central problems in the creation of a self-... 

It Is of Interest to project the deuterium requirements for use as a fusion fuel In controlled thermonuclear reactors (CTR). Robert Hlrsch, Director of the U.S.A.E.C. Division of Controlled Thermonuclear Research has predicted the production of significant amounts of fusion energy by 1980, and fusion power commercialization before the turn of the century (22). A report prepared by a group at Brookhaven National Laboratory (23) can be used for estimating energy and deuterium requirements in a future fusion-based energy regime. In which all fossil fuels (except for ship and petrochemical feed requirements) are replaced with synthetic fuels produced by D-D fusion reactors, and all electricity production is by CTR. They estimate that by the year 2020,... 

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