Tritium Extraction

Bred tritium must be recovered from the blanket and the exhaust, purified, and returned to fueling, closing the machine's fuel loop.

From bred to usable

Breeding tritium in the blanket is only half the fuel loop; the bred tritium must be extracted from the breeder material, collected, purified, and made available as fuel or product. In parallel, unburned tritium pumped from the plasma exhaust is recovered. Together these streams determine how much tritium the machine can supply as product and how much it recycles as fuel.

Two recovery streams

The blanket stream carries tritium bred by neutron capture on lithium; it is removed from the breeder material and collected. The exhaust stream carries unburned tritium pumped from the divertor, since only a small fraction of fuel burns per pass. Both feed a purification and isotope-separation stage that returns clean tritium to fueling and routes surplus to product accounting.

Why extraction gates self-sufficiency

The net tritium available depends not only on how much is bred, the breeding ratio, but on how efficiently it is extracted and how little is lost to retention in walls and permeation through structures. High breeding with poor extraction still fails to close the loop. Extraction efficiency, losses, and inventory therefore sit alongside the breeding-ratio reconciliation as part of the open self-sufficiency question the first-of-a-kind machine must resolve.

• Recovers tritium from the blanket and the plasma exhaust
• Purifies and returns clean tritium to fueling
• Extraction efficiency and losses gate self-sufficiency

This page describes a design and simulation study, not a built machine. Construction begins Q2 2027; first-of-a-kind first tritium is targeted near 2030.