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, ${\hbox{Li}}_{2}{\hbox{O}}, {\hbox{LiAlO}}_{2}, {\hbox{Li}}_{4}{\hbox{SiO}}_{4}, {\hbox{Li}}_{2}{\hbox{ZrO}}_{3}, {\hbox{Li}}_{8}{\hbox{ZrO}}_{6}$ or ${\hbox{Li}}_{2}{\hbox{TiO}}_{3}$ in a (DT) fusion driven hybrid reactor fuelled with ${\hbox{ThO}}_{2}$ or ${\hbox{UO}}_{2}$ was investigated. For this purpose in addition to these solid breeders, different types of liquid breeders, namely natural lithium, Flibe, Flinabe and ${\hbox{Li}}_{20}{\hbox{Sn}}_{80}$ 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 ${\hbox{UO}}_{2}$ fuel using natural lithium as coolant and ${\hbox{Li}}_{2}{\hbox{O}}$ as solid breeder had the highest TBR value.