SBRI: UKAEA Fusion industry challenges prototype development

This is a Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) competition funded by the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA).

This funding programme will support the UK’s leadership in economic, sustainable, and scalable fusion energy.

The aim of this competition is to encourage innovation in the development of Lithium in an economic, sustainable, and scalable fusion energy fuel cycle.

A pre-commercial activity under SBRI. The aim of this competition is to encourage innovation in the development of Lithium in an economic, sustainable, and scalable fusion energy fuel cycle.

Your project can focus on one or more of the following:

Isotopic Enrichment

• Technologies that can enrich the proportion of the minor isotope Lithium-6.
• Enrichment will be essential to the fuel sustainability of many fusion power designs and, where it is not essential, can add value by boosting Tritium production. This will enable the commissioning and re-start of other fusion power plants.
• Lithium enrichment represents a front-end fuel cycle service that will be demanded by fusion reactor operators around the world.

Examples of performance measures that would constitute an improvement over existing Lithium enrichment technologies include:

• product quality, for example, maximum enrichment level (percentage), purity and product form (metal or compound)
• economics, for example, production rate, capital cost, energy and resource consumption or value of co-products
• environmental and worker protection, for example, hazards, waste production, obstacles to licensing such as the Minamata Convention

Tritium Extraction

Technologies that can extract Tritium from a Lithium breeding material and make it available, fast and efficient enough to fuel the ongoing Deuterium-Tritium (DT) reaction.

Performance parameters relevant to a fusion energy plant’s fuel cycle system include:

• rate of extraction
• continuous operation
• availability of recovered Tritium
• energy cost
• Conversion and Manufacturing

Technologies or techniques that can convert Lithium from the form available in existing supply chains into either:

• a form suitable for an isotopic enrichment process
• a form required by the Tritium breeding system of a fusion energy plant

Aspects relevant to a sustainable and competitive supply chain include:

• raw material input forms for example, Lithium Chloride, Carbonate, Hydroxide
• product output forms, for example, suitability for a variety of enrichment processes or breeding systems

potential to recycle Lithium, for example, use of recycled Lithium from other sectors in fusion, or recycling of Lithium after its use in a fusion energy plant Additional information: https://apply-for-innovation-funding.service.gov.uk/competition/1572/overview/b46f6801-18ac-401d-b654-a540f79f9171#how-to-apply