Correlation Between Tritium Release and Thermal Annealing of Damages in Neutron-Irradiated Li₄SiO₄

Understanding of the tritium release process from ceramic breeders is of importance to establish a reliable tritium recovery concept for fusion reactors. Release behavior of tritium produced in the neutron-irradiated Li₄SiO₄ is investigated by the Thermal Desorption Spectroscopy (TDS). Thermal annealing behavior of the irradiation damages was also studied by Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) method.

These experimental results showed that the annealing process of the damages occurred in the almost same temperature range of tritium released from the neutron-irradiated Li₄SiO₄. This suggested that the thermal annealing processes of the damages were closely correlated with the tritium release process. It was also found that the thermal annealing consisted of two processes. The activation energies of the two processes were determined to be 0.5 eV and 0.96 eV, respectively.