Upcoming Clean Energy Materials & Manufacturing

Development of a new solid tritium breeder blanket

Funder EPSRC (part of UKRI)
Recipient organisation University of Manchester
Funding Not disclosed
Period Sept 2027 — Sept 2027

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

Fusion reactors need tritium to run, but nature only produces 0.41 kg of it per year—and a single 1 GW reactor would burn through roughly 100 kg annually. This project tackles a critical bottleneck for fusion energy: the lack of a sustainable tritium supply. Tritium can be bred inside the reactor by exposing lithium to neutrons from the fusion reaction, but the solid materials currently used for this—lithium orthosilicate and lithium metatitanate pebbles—have serious flaws. The silicate crumbles easily, and the titanate may not breed enough tritium. Both designs also rely on beryllium as a neutron multiplier, which is scarce, toxic, and often contaminated with uranium. The researchers aim to design a new solid breeder blanket for a compact fusion reactor, using a different material that avoids these problems. If successful, this could remove a major engineering obstacle to commercial fusion power. That matters because fusion promises a near-limitless, low-carbon energy source—one that could transform electricity grids and reduce dependence on fossil fuels. The work is applied engineering, tackling a specific, practical problem that currently stands between fusion theory and working power plants.

View original technical description
A future power station will employ the fusion of deuterium and tritium, as it requires the lowest temperature to achieve ignition. Deuterium is abundant; however, tritium is only generated in nature at a rate of 0.41 kg per year and has a 12.6 year half-life making it extremely rare. With a 1 GW fusion reactor expected to require ~100 kg of tritium annually, it is essential that we identify a sustainable supply. Fortunately, tritium can be bred from the transmutation of lithium driven by absorption of the neutron ejected by the D-T reaction. Demonstration of a sustainable tritium cycle is one of the major outstanding engineering challenges facing fusion. Current blanket concepts were conceived during the design of ITER and use either Li ceramic pebbles or a liquid lithium lead eutectic. The solid tritium-breeding concepts utilise either lithium orthosilicate or lithium metatitanate pebbles. Both materials have issues, however; the silicate has a low crush strength, which could result in pebble fragmentation, and there is concern about whether the titanate offers a sufficiently high tritium breeding ratio. Further, current solid breeder concepts employ beryllium as a neutron multiplier, which is undesirable as it is relatively rare, hazardous to handle, and typically contains trace quantities of uranium that are hard to remove. Therefore, this project will look to design a new breeder blanket for a compact fusion reactor, that uses a solid breeder material.

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Researchers

William Watson (Student)

Related Research

Grants with similar aims, by meaning.

The effect of hydrogen isotopes and helium on tritium diffusion and extraction from candidate fusion breeder blanket ceramics
Development of Advanced Ceramic Breeder Materials for Fusion Energy
A retention and transport model for tritium in lithium and at fusion breeder interfaces
Tritium removal from molten salt media in nuclear fusion and fission processes
An Investigation into the Potential for the Development of a Tritium Production Industry to service Fusion Power Plants

Original classification

Studentship

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