Simulated Aging of Metal Tritides by Ball Milling Induced Gas Incorporation

Abstract

The study of tritium aging effects on materials requires a significant time commitment as a consequence of its 12.3-year half-life, making developmental studies prohibitively difficult and expensive. However, detailed knowledge of long-term aging effects is critical to the development of structural and storage materials for future fusion reactor technologies. As a result, multiple approaches to simulated aging effects have been investigated. We report a method of simulated tritium aging achieved though the incorporation of trapped gases via high-energy ball milling of LaNi_4.25Al_0.75 alloy storage material. Experimental results verify the presence of trapped gases by a combination of temperature programmed desorption and LECO chemical analysis. Following gas incorporation, we find that many of the degraded hydrogen sorption properties found in aged storage materials are reproduced by the ball milled powders.

Keywords:

• Helium bubbles
• simulated tritium aging
• metal tritides
• tritium

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge Prabhu Ganesan for technical support on the project and would also like to thank Jim Klein, Harry García Flores, and Greg Staack for helpful discussions and direction. This work was produced by Battelle Savannah River Alliance, LLC under contract number 89303321CEM000080 with the U.S. Department of Energy. Publisher acknowledges the U.S. Government license to provide public access under the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan).

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge the National Nuclear Security Administration Office of Tritium Modernization for funding this work.