LIBRTI aims to achieve demonstrations of controlled fusion fuel capability via the creation of a testbed facility for engineering-scale tritium breeder blankets.
Related research streams will advance digital simulations of breeding experiments. The LIBRTI programme is set to invest approximately £200m over 2022/23 to 2027/28.
How does a breeder blanket work?
Purpose: A breeder blanket is used in fusion energy machines to produce more fuel whilst also acting as a heat exchange, which can later be used to generate electricity. The aim is to produce tritium, the extremely rare fusion fuel, by embedding lithium in the blanket. The lithium will react with neutrons to produce the required tritium.
Position: The breeder blanket surrounds the fusion machines’ core where the fusion events happen.
Fusion: Fusion combines small atoms to make larger atoms (such as helium), releasing a lot of energy.
Fuel production: The breeder blanket contains materials (such as lithium) that absorb the high-energy particles (neutrons) released during the fusion events.
Neutron absorption: When these neutrons hit the lithium in the blanket, they transform it into another fuel called tritium, which can then be used in future fusion events.
Heat absorption: The breeder blanket also absorbs the heat generated from the fusion events.
Energy conversion: This heat can be used to produce steam, which drives turbines to generate electricity.
Dual role: So, the breeder blanket helps by both creating more fuel and exchanging the heat released during fusion. This way, the breeder blanket plays a crucial role in making fusion energy a more sustainable and efficient energy source.
Programme description
LIBRTI will adapt a Culham Campus building to become the ‘LIBRTI Facility’. The building will house a ‘testbed’ comprising a large neutron source, situated in a shielded blockhouse and surrounded by rooms for assembly and disassembly of multitonne breeder blanket prototypes. Customers will bring the latter to the Campus with the aim of proving that their engineering-scale prototypes can produce tritium under neutrons.
Tritium production requires a significant safety case for the building and work. Other hazards will pertain: many of the breeder blanket constituents are toxic (lead, beryllium); fire risk is high (lithium adjacent to water); there will evolution of acidic species (such as hydrofluoric acid).
Once experiments are running, the aim will be to consider how neutron flux, length of neutron exposure, temperature, gas types and flow rates, breeder material composition and geometry etc, impact on breeding efficiency.
Subsequent to experiment, materials must be safely stored or disposed of. In parallel with physical experiments, LIBRTI will build physics models and the digital tools to utilise these, in tandem with experiment operating metrics, to simulate and then predict, breeding outcomes.
The digital tools will feed off of extensive international nuclear data libraries (which outline how neutrons interact with materials) but require the development of better tritium transport data and codes (to explain how tritium will move through liquids, solids and their interfaces.)
The programme aims to:
- Design, implement and validate innovative tritium breeder technologies by developing a first of a kind, world leading, facility that exposes engineered breeder prototypes to high flux fusion neutrons, and to capture the knowledge gained from these experiments.
- Establish a digital simulation capability and skills to model breeder technologies, predict tritium breeding performance, analyse experimental results and provide guidance for future design development of breeder blankets ideas.
- Develop collaborative partnerships with greater than half of the LIBRTI funding being invested and leveraged in industry and academia.
- Maximise industrial growth in fusion fuel technologies and spillover into adjacent sectors to enable UK industry to export the technology globally.
- Drive inward investment through further development of the UK Fusion Cluster.
- Expand key UK skills through design, build and operation of a first of a kind facility, including within the supply chain.
Programme deliverables
The LIBRTI team is focussed on delivering:
- A significantly repurposed Culham Site building to house a commercially available 14 MeV neutron source, shielding and thermal management installations for breeder experiments and space for pre- and post-experiment activities (including cool down and disassembly of activated materials)
- A flexible and scalable digital platform that enables full in silico replication of breeding experiments for breeding model validation and improved breeder test methodologies via simulation
- A cohort of expertise within both UK and international partners, which can provide scientific, engineering, operational and programme management capabilities to underpin ongoing breeder developments and wider UK Fusion Cluster activities
- A research path to a higher neutron flux on the installed source via retrofits or aggregation of units
- Facilitation of, and participation in, early international ‘user consortia’ to ensure that the physical installation delivers a testbed that is fit-for-purpose and that early experiments operate within safety and environmental boundary conditions
- Increased enablement of industry and academia to use LIBRTI, via a steady investment in feederstream research
Identified benefits of the programme
The identified benefits of the LIBRTI programme are
- demonstrate considerable technical risk reduction for fusion fuel cycle technologies
- demonstrate to regulators that fusion fuel inventory control in an integrated fuel cycle element
- maintain UK international leadership in Fusion Research
- enhance international supply chain capability and capacity in fusion fuel technologies
- develop commercialisable Intellectual Property for the UK and its international partners
- increase income for UK industry
- increase efficiencies and investor confidence in fusion technology firms
- increase human capital though growth of fusion skills workforce in the UK
Get involved
LIBRTI will engage the market to create an engineering and digital framework to harness Tier 1 capabilities for the LIBRTI physical and digital builds.
LIBRTI will launch a series of feederstream R&D project calls (likely to address, but not limited to, shielding, control and instrumentation, diagnostics development, digital platform development, ventilation etc.) Participation in a mini breeder or large mock up experiment will not preclude parties from feederstream projects and funding.
All procurement opportunities will appear on our UKAEA pipeline and for any enquiries please reach out to our Commercial Lead for the programme.