Wang Jingchuan,Yao Yong,Luo Junhong,Yao Weizhi,Gao Bo,Chen Chang'an
Nitrogen is potentially used in tokamak as seed impurity for avoiding divertor damage and achieving good plasma performance. Herein, the secondary effect of nitrogen was studied by wire electrical explosion (WEE) method. In the presence of nitrogen, the inventory of hydrogen retention
in the tungsten dust was largely increased, while hydrogen was retained by chemical bonding with nitrogen, besides dissolving into lattice and trapping in defects of tungsten, which was identified by FTIR and XRD. This study indicates that nitrogen seed impurity will cause serious tritium
retention and speed tungsten-based plasma facing components (PFC)' erosion.
Understanding the tritium release and retention behavior of candidate tritium breeder materials is crucial for breeder blanket design. Recently, a melt spraying process was developed to prepare Li 4 SiO 4 pebbles, which were subsequently subjected to the in-pile tritium production and extraction platform in China Mianyang Research Reactor (CMRR) to investigate their in-situ tritium release behavior and irradiation performance. The results demonstrate that HT is the main tritium release form, and adding hydrogen to the purge gas reduces tritium retention while increasing the HT percent in the purge gas. Post-irradiation experiments reveal that the irradiated pebbles darken in color and their grains swell, but the mechanical properties remain largely unchanged. It is concluded that the tritium residence time of Li 4 SiO 4 made by melt spraying method at 467 °C is approximately 23.34 h. High-density Li 4 SiO 4 pebbles exhibit tritium release at relatively low temperatures (<600 °C) that is mainly controlled by bulk diffusion. The diffusion coefficient at 525 °C and 550 °C is 1.19 × 10 −11 cm 2 /s and 5.34 × 10 −11 cm 2 /s, respectively, with corresponding tritium residence times of 21.3 hours and 4.7 hours.