An Assessment of the Feasibility of Fueling a Tokamak Reactor with Lithium Tritide Pellets

The use of ⁶LiT pellet injection for the Burning Plasma Experiment (BPX), the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), or reactor fueling using the low ion temperature catalyzed reaction ⁶LiT + D-D proposed by Krasnopol'skij et al. is investigated. Solid LiT has significant advantages as a pellet material over cryogenic deuterium-tritium because of its higher heat of sublimation, mechanical strength, attainable pellet velocity, and plasma penetration. The implications of this for ignition scenarios are discussed. Injection of LiT has the additional advantage of inherent lithium wall conditioning, which has been shown in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) and the Texas Experimental Tokamak (TEXT) to have effects similar to boronization. The injection of LiH pellets has been demonstrated in TEXT, and observed pellet penetration is compared with an ablation model, which is then used to predict LiT penetration in ITER and BPX.