New Award to Advance Molten Salt Tritium Fuel Breeding for Fusion Energy as Part of UK Atomic Energy Authority’s £200M Innovation Programme

A School of Chemistry team will lead a multi-partner international project aimed at developing efficient tritium fuel breeding, addressing a crucial need in the development of sustainable fusion energy.

School of Chemistry researchers Dr. Ilka Schmueser (Project Lead), Prof. Andrew Mount (Principal Investigator, Pyrochemical Research Facility (PRL) Director) and Dr. Justin Elliott (PRL Manager) have been awarded £800k by the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) to lead a consortium that will develop processes for sustainable tritium breeding in a molten salt breeding blanket and demonstrate it in a fusion-relevant neutron source.

Their project, TRIBAL (TRItium Breeding to Advance LIBRTI), is one of twelve signature research and innovation programmes involving small scale tritium breeding process development and digital simulation recently announced as part of UKAEA's £200 million Lithium Breeding Tritium Innovation (LIBRTI) programme. LIBRTI is a major UKAEA programme designed to advance lithium-based tritium breeding as a key component of the route map to develop fusion energy, to provide a significant contribution to the energy mix required to meet the net zero challenge and beyond. Fusion offers a long-term energy source that potentially generates abundant energy without producing greenhouse gases or generating long-lived radioactive waste.

Tritium is an essential fusion fuel component in the D-T fusion reactor of choice, but it does not occur abundantly in nature. However, it can in principle be generated (bred) by capturing the neutrons generated in the fusion reaction using lithium in a "breeding blanket" (e.g. a lithium molten salt) which will surround the reactor. LIBRTI seeks to demonstrate the feasibility of controlled tritium breeding and extraction which are sufficiently efficient to enable fuelling a self-sustaining fusion power plant.

TRIBAL will concentrate on building and validating a demonstration system for tritium breeding from a lithium fluoride/ beryllium fluoride molten salt and testing its capability to generate tritium efficiently using the neutron source at SHINE Technologies in Wisconsin, US. The aim, the first demonstration of efficient tritium breeding in a molten salt using a fusion relevant source, addresses a critical step in sustainable fusion development.

Members of the Pyrochemical Research Laboratory doing work in glove boxes. — The Pyrochemical Research Lab team at work in the lab.

We are very excited to receive this award and for the opportunity it gives to advance our work in tritium breeding, management and extraction together with our partners. The outputs from this first-in-the-UK experimental lithium fluoride/ beryllium fluoride molten salts R&D programme will provide a critical step accelerating the development of a larger molten salt breeding blanket for LIBRTI in the future and the delivery of UK fusion energy.

We are delighted to have received this signature award; TRIBAL recognises and leverages our Edinburgh Chemistry team’s expertise in molten salt-based tritium production and control, combined with the Pyrochemical Research Laboratory's UK-leading molten salt process and systems development and characterisation facilities. We now look forward to leading this multinational consortium, working closely to address this multidisciplinary challenge in partnership with our leading academic and industrial collaborators: Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Xcimer Energy Corporation, Eni SpA, and the University of California Berkeley.

The Pyrochemical Research Laboratory team outside the Joseph Black Building — The Pyrochemical Research Laboratory team outside the School of Chemistry.

Publication date

07 Feb, 2025