Online Tritium Recovery and Inventory

Keeping the in-blanket tritium inventory low reduces both losses and the tritium at risk, so recovery runs continuously, not in batches.

Low inventory by design

The breeder aims to keep only a small amount of tritium inside the blanket at any moment. A low working inventory means less tritium lost to decay and permeation, and less tritium at risk in the machine. Achieving that requires recovering bred tritium continuously rather than accumulating and processing it in batches.

Why continuous beats batch

• Less tritium held means less lost to decay each day.
• Lower inventory reduces the source term in any incident.
• Continuous flow eases the tritium plant's peak load.
• Fast recovery supports the net breeding the machine needs.

Coupling to safety

Tritium inventory is a safety quantity as much as a breeding quantity. Keeping it small is a materials-and-process decision that reduces the amount of mobile tritium in the plant, which in turn shapes the licensing and safety case. Recovery design and inventory management are therefore treated as one problem with both breeding and safety objectives.

Status

Recovery efficiency and speed feed directly into the open net-breeding question. The breeder does not assume ideal recovery; it designs for low inventory and counts realistic losses in its honest tritium accounting.

Coupling to the tritium plant

Continuous recovery smooths the load the tritium plant sees, avoiding the peaks a batch process would impose. A steadier feed lets the plant be sized to an average rather than a surge, and it keeps the machine's mobile inventory low throughout operation rather than accumulating between batches, aligning breeding, processing, and safety objectives.

This page documents a design and simulation study, not a built machine. Construction begins Q2 2027; first-of-a-kind first tritium is targeted near 2030. Figures are computed, reproducible targets, not measurements.