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The predawn darkness on a cool Florida night was shattered by the ignition of nine Merlin engines on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The thrust of the engines shook the ground miles away. From a distance, the rocket appeared to slowly rise above the horizon. For the cargo onboard, the launch was anything but gentle, as the ignition of liquid oxygen generated more than 1.5 million pounds of force. After the rocket had been out of sight for several minutes, the booster dramatically returned to Earth with several sonic booms in a captivating show of engineering designed to make space travel less expensive and more sustainable.
D. R. Hanchar, M. S. Kazimi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 395-400
Tritium | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A22896
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A transient tritium permeation model is developed based on a simplified conceptual DT-fueled fusion reactor design. The major design features in the model are a solid breeder blanket, a low pressure purge gas in the blanket and a high pressure helium primary coolant. Tritium inventory in the breeder is due to diffusive hold-up and solubility effects. Diffusive hold-up is assumed to be the dominant factor in order to separate the solution for the breeder tritium concentration. The model was applied to the STARFIRE-Interim Reference Design, whose system parameters yielded a breeder tritium inventory on the order of grams. The breeder pellets (average radius, 10−3 cm) reach their steady-state tritium content in approximately 4 hours from startup, assuming continuous full power operation. Both the steady-state breeder tritium concentration and the time to reach that steady-state are proportional to the square of the pellet radius.