Tritium breeding blanket

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A breeding blanket surrounds the fusion plasma with lithium-bearing material so that the 14.1 MeV neutrons released by deuterium-tritium fusion convert lithium into fresh tritium, which is then extracted and returned to the fuel cycle. The design requirement is a tritium breeding ratio above 1.0 — commonly quoted as needing a margin above that to cover losses, decay and start-up inventory for the next machine — because there is no external supply large enough to fuel a fleet of power plants. No fusion device has yet demonstrated a closed breeding cycle. ITER is designed to carry six Test Blanket Systems, mock-ups placed in equatorial ports to test breeding concepts in a real fusion neutron environment; two of them are European, the Helium-Cooled Pebble-Bed and the Helium-Cooled Lead Lithium designs. The distinction that matters for this Journey is that the ITER Test Blanket Module programme is an experiment on breeding, not a working breeding system.

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