Progress in compatibility experiments on lithium–lead with candidate structural materials for fusion in China

Liquid LiPb eutectic is one of the promising candidate tritium breeder materials for fusion reactors. This paper presents the progress in compatibility experiments with liquid LiPb achieved up to now in China for some candidate structural materials. The results showed that CLAM steel had good compatibility with flowing LiPb at 480 °C with the velocity of 0.08 m/s after 5000 h in DRAGON-I loop. On the other hand, after exposed in static LiPb at 700 °C for 500 h in a SiC crucible, the W and Mo specimens suffered much more weight loss compared with Nb specimen, and a thin reaction product layer was visible on the surface of all the three refractory metals. Preliminary analysis on SiCf/SiC composite specimens indicated that there was no penetration of LiPb and no reaction products on the surface with CVD SiC coating, which showed SiCf/SiC composite were stable and compatible with static LiPb under 700 °C after 500 h exposure.