14 MeV DT Neutron Test Facility at the Sandia Ion Beam Laboratory

Tritium-titanium target degradation due to deuterium irradiation for DT neutron production

“…Deuterium ions share the same chemical and material properties similar to tritium, thus replacing the atoms of tritium. This ion exchange process ends up depleting the tritium atoms near the projected range of the deuterium ions [19,23]. Deuterium and tritium have low binding energies in the metals, and if the maximum storage of these hydrogen isotopes is exceeded in any layer at higher fluence, atoms higher than the permissible limit are removed [24].…”

“…The utilization rate or burn-up rate of tritium is very low compared to ion exchange and outgassing. For example, the utilization rate of tritium atoms is about 1.5 × 10 −5 neutrons/deuterium ion for 135 keV energy deuterium beam [19]. We have not considered the burn-up of tritium and loss of tritium due to radioactive decay in the simulations.…”

“…The performance of the tritium-titanium target depends on the tritium concentration and energy of deuterium ions. Their degradation in neutron production is very important to predict as these neutrons are used to investigate fusion material research and validate the fusion benchmark and cross-section measurement experiments [19]. The NeuSdesc is one of the codes that is extensively used to predict the neutron spectra from the tritium-titanium targets [36].…”

“…Tritium-titanium targets are among such commercially available targets [13][14][15][16] that are used to produce the 14.1 MeV energy neutrons through the 2 H( 3 H,n) 4 He reaction at various laboratories [9,10,17,18]. The interactions of deuterium ions with the tritium-titanium target remove tritium via sputtering, outgassing, diffusion, replacement with deuterium ions, or ion exchange while some fraction of tritium is utilized in the neutron production [19]. Tritium loss due to sputtering, outgassing, and ion exchange affects neutron production and governs the target lifetime.…”