Description of need
Inside the actual plant, Nuclear fusion plants will require tritium detectors that have low latency, high sensitivity, and that can function accurately in high radiation, high heat flux, and high magnetic field environments.
Processes and detectors that currently work in a batch fashion will need to work in a real time.
Fusion plants will also need to quantify the amount of tritium being bred.
In addition, according to Baalrud et al,
An ideal analytical method for tritium would be accurate (>99%), fast (seconds or less), in-line (no waste or cross-contamination), reliable and inexpensive – such a technique does not currently exist. Techniques will (also) be needed for measuring tritium concentrations in liquids such as PbLi, Li, or FLiBe.
From the 2023-05-22 Fusion Technology Roadmap Workshop at EPRI, the following challenges were identified:
- Tritium removal from solid materials
- Tritium sensing in solid materials
- Lack of defined criteria for tritium tracking and accountancy (accuracy, etc.)
- Water de-tritiation, and avoiding large volumes of lightly tritiated water
- Robust enough sensors that can handle heat, irradiation, magnetic fields, etc.
Problem severity (1-10)
Who has this need
Total addressable market (TAM)
Solutions today, and their shortcomings
Potentially relevant capabilities
- Distributed ledger technology
- Laser Raman spectroscopy (source)
References
- 2023-05-02 Fusion Technology Roadmap Workshop at EPRI
- PPPL: Fusion Energy and Nonproliferation Workshop Report
- Baalrud et al., “A Community Plan for Fusion Energy and Discovery Plasma Sciences.”