Tritium breeding experiments with blanket mock-ups containing [formula omitted]-enriched lithium titanate and beryllium irradiated with DT neutrons

Abstract

Experiments have been conducted with breeding blanket mock-ups consisting of layers of candidate materials for JAERI’s pebble bed blanket design: lithium titanate, beryllium and reduced activation ferritic steel F82H. The mock-ups were irradiated with 14 MeV neutrons from the DT neutron source at FNS. The lithium titanate was enriched to 40 and 95% in Li 6 . The local tritium production rate in the 12 mm thick breeding layers was measured by means of pellet detectors of lithium titanate, Li 2CO 3 and liquid scintillation counting techniques. Additional verification of the neutron spectrum was obtained from material activation such as activation foils. The results were analyzed with the Monte Carlo neutron transport code MCNP-4C and several transport cross section libraries such as FENDL/MC-2.0. The calculation/experiment ratio was found to be within the combined error estimate of calculation and experiment but in some cases, the calculations showed an overestimation tendency.