Status of Beryllium RD in Japan

摘要

Recently, several R&D programs of beryllium for fusion are being promoted in Japan and the community of beryllium study is growing up. In the R&D area of beryllium for solid breeding blanket, major subjects are beryllide application for prototype reactor, lifetime evaluation of neutron multiplier, impurity effect of beryllium and recycling of irradiated beryllium. Especially, the study of beryllide application has significant progress in these two years. The basic properties such as tritium inventory, oxidation behavior, steam interaction for stoichiometric Be_(12)Ti fabricated by HIP have been studied and some advantages against beryllium were made clear. For manufacturing technology development, phase diagram and ductility improvement have been studied. And, Be_(12)Ti pebbles with the improved microstructure were successfully fabricated by Rotating Electrode Process, In order to enhance the R&D activities, the R&D network consisted of industries, universities and laboratories in all Japan have been organized. Many collaboration and information exchange strongly promotes the R&D and some projects for commercial application have been launched from these activities. Also international collaborative project such as IEA and ISTC have been launched or planed. Recent results of R&D in Japan is described on this paper.