An aqueous lithium salt blanket for ITER

An aqueous lithium salt blanket is designed as a candidate for the tritium production blanket of ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor). There are two rows of flat tube aqueous salt flow channels placed between beryllium blocks. The inboard and outboard blanket configurations have been optimized to maximize tritium breeding. A local outboard TBR (tritium breeding ratio) of 1.44 is obtained using LiOH at a concentration of 5 g/100 cm/sup 3/. The overall TBR determined from 3-D neutronics calculations is 0.88. The aqueous-salt flow parameters have been optimized to minimize the salt pressure and inventory, leading to a pressure of 1.15 MPa and tritium inventory of 104 g. There are no crevices in the aqueous-salt channels, and a redundancy has been provided against a salt-to-water leak potential. The first wall, blanket, and shield qualify for shallow land burial. The highest temperature in the blanket after a two-week period without coolant is only 440 degrees C. The first wall and blanket are capable of withstanding the worst disruption load.<>