Numerical Estimation Method of the Hydrogen Isotope Inventory in the Hydrogen Isotope Separation System for Fusion Reactor

Abstract

In the fuel cycle system of the ITER, a large fraction of tritium inventory is expected to be in the cryogenic distillation columns of the hydrogen isotope separation system (ISS). Therefore, the numerical estimation method of hydrogen isotopes inventory in the ISS with high precision is strongly required from safety point of view. Two series of experiments were performed to establish the numerical estimation method of the overall hydrogen isotope inventory in the ISS at steady state using ITER-scale large cryogenic distillation columns at the Tritium Systems Test Assembly in the Los Alamos National Laboratory under the US-Japan collaboration on tritium safety engineering. As a result of experiments, it was confirmed that the hydrogen isotope inventory in a cryogenic distillation column was estimated by the numerical estimation method proposed in this work with enough high precision from the engineering point of view, and it was proved that this method was applied for the ITER-scale cryogenic distillation columns. The precision of this estimation method was found to be almost independent on the composition profile in columns, and especially the liquid holdup ratio of deuterium to the volume of the column was less influential in the inner diameter of the packed section. In addition, the gaseous inventory in an ITER-scale cryogenic distillation column was found to have considerable impact on the total amount of holdup of the column.

KEYWORDS:

• ITER
• fusion reactors
• tritium
• inventory
• cryogenic distillation
• isotope separation
• liquid holdup
• tritium handling
• numerical estimation
• fuel cycle
• hydrogen isotopes
• ISS