Liquid breeder materials

The potential and limitations of a particular breeder material for application in a fusion reactor device depend to a large extent upon the ability of the research community to generate suitable designs, develop efficient tritium extraction systems and solve the major materials problems. In this paper, design, tritium extraction and material compatibility issues are discussed for blankets based on the eutectic Pb-17Li, pure lithium and to a lesser extent molten salts and aqueous salt solutions. In spite of the relatively limited research effort evolved, liquid breeder blankets continue to be attractive solutions for tritium generation. However, the experimental programs need to be extended and include more integrated experiments.