Fabrication and Installation of the JAERI Fuel Cleanup System

Abstract

This paper reports that the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI) has developed a full scale Fuel Cleanup System (JFCU) that processes a simulated plasma exhaust at the Tritium Systems Test Assembly (TSTA) in the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The JFCU was designed by the Tritium Process Laboratory (TPL) of the JAERI based on the component studies performed under previous TSTA-TPL collaboration and the pilot scale experiment using grams of tritium at the TPL. The JFCU accepts a simulated fusion reactor exhaust, a mixture of hydrogen isotopes with an impurity level of up to 15% at a throughput of 4.2 {times} 10{sup {minus}3} mol/s continuously and produces pure hydrogen isotopes while exhausting tritium-free waste gas. Some newly developed components, such as the Ceramic Electrolysis Cell and the large Zirconium-Cobalt bed, required special attention during fabrication and assembly.