Speaker
Description
In the European fusion project, the ENEA division of Fusion and technology for Nuclear Safety and
Security Department coordinates the Italian program supported by third parties (universities, Italian
research institutes and industries).
In particular, the ENEA Experimental Engineering Division with headquarter in the Brasimone RC,
design, develops and characterizes technologies and materials related to the Water Cooled Lithium
Lead (WCLL) Breeding Blanket (BB) and the connected ancillary system.
The WCLL is a BB concept featured by pressurized water as the coolant and Lithium-Lead Eutectic
(LLE) enriched at 90% in 6 Li as the breeder, neutron multiplier and tritium carrier.
ENEA research team is involved in the design of a multipurpose experimental infrastructure
conceived to investigate and qualify the water and LLE technologies for the DEMO BB and balance
of plant systems.
The proper design of the WCLL-BB is related to the capability of extraction of tritium in the BB
and to be rerouted as fuel in the plasma chamber to achieve the self-sustainability goal. To
successfully meet this task, experimental activities are carried out to characterize different T-
extraction technologies (e.g. Gas-Liquid Contactor-GLC an Permeator Against Vacuum-PAV
systems). In this tests hydrogen is used in the experiments as “cold surrogate” of T for safety issue.
Special attention is dedicated to development, optimization and characterization of structural and
functional materials having low activation, chemical compatibility, enough ductility, and creep
resistance at higher temperatures and dpa’s. Moreover, the protective coatings represent an
important R&D area to enhance materials functionality.
Other relevant research tasks are dedicated to the development of reliable instruments to control key
operative parameters, such as flow rate (development of a novel thermal flow meter), H
concentration in LLE (development of Hydrogen Permeation Sensor) and to the characterization of
physical properties such as the tritium solubility and diffusivity in LLE.
