R&Ds of a LiTiO pebble bed for a test blanket module in JAEA

Tanigawa, Hisashi; Hoshino, Tsuyoshi; Kawamura, Yoshinori; Nakamichi, Masaru; Ochiai, Kentaro; Akiba, Masato; Ando, Masami; Enoeda, Mikio; Ezato, Koichiro; Hayashi, Kimio; Hirose, Takanori; Konno, Chikara  ; Nakamura, Hirofumi; Nozawa, Takashi; Ogiwara, Hiroyuki*; Seki, Yohji; Tanigawa, Hiroyasu; Tsuchiya, Kunihiko ; Tsuru, Daigo; Yamanishi, Toshihiko

This paper presents recent achievements of the research activities for the TBM being developed in JAEA, focusing on the pebble bed of the tritium breeder materials and tritium behaviour. For the breeder material, the chemical stability of LiTiO has been improved by LiO additives. In order to analyze the pebble bed behaviour, thermo-mechanical properties of the LiTiO pebble bed has been experimentally obtained. In order to verify nuclear properties of the pebble bed, the activation foil method has been proposed and a preliminary experiment has been conducted. For the tritium behaviour, the chemical densified coating method has been well developed and tritium recovery system has been modified taking account of the design change of the TBM.