ITER hydrogen isotope separation system conceptual design description

Abstract

This paper presents integrated hydrogen Isotope Separation System (ISS) designs for ITER based on requirements for plasma exhaust processing, neutral beam injection deuterium cleanup, pellet injector propellant detritiation, waste water detritiation, and breeding blanket detritiation. Specific ISS designs are developed for a machine with an aqueous lithium salt blanket (ALSB) and a machine with a solid ceramic breeding blanket (SBB). The differences in the ISS designs arising from the different blanket concepts are highlighted. It is found that the ISS designs for the two blanket concepts considered are very similar with the only major difference being the requirement for an additional large water distillation column for ALSB water detritiation. The extraction of tritium from the ALSB is based on flash evaporation to separate the blanket water from the dissolved Li salt, with the tritiated water then being fed to the ISS for detritiation. This technology is considered to be relatively well understood in comparison to front-end processes for SBB detritiation. In the design of the cryogenic distillation portion of the ISS, it was found that the tritium inventory could be very large (>600 g) unless specific design measures were taken to reduce it. In the designs which are presented, the tritium inventory has been reduced to about 180 g, which is less than the ITER single-failure release limit of 200 g. Further design optimization and isolation of components is expected to reduce the inventory further.