Effects of lithium burn-up on TBR in DEMO reactor SlimCS

Abstract

Abstract Lithium in a breeding blanket is burned up through neutron nuclear reactions in fusion DEMO reactors. Effects of decrease of solid breeder materials due to lithium burn-up on tritium breeding ratio (TBR) are not systematically calculated in the past. For the SlimCS blanket design, TBR is calculated taking into account the lithium burn-ups by one dimensional Sn radiation transport calculation code ANISN in this study. The 6Li burn-ups are 8–79% after 10-year operation. TBR due to 6Li decreases to 40% of the initial one in some layer, while it increases in some layers. The TBR integrated over all the blanket decreases to around 96% of the initial one. The study makes it clear that the reduction of the TBR due to the lithium burn-up is not so large.