The tritium breeding capacity of fusion blankets is a critical factor in achieving tritium self-sufficiency in fusion reactors. Current designs for tritium production in blankets are based on neutronics simulations, whose accuracy requires experimental validation. This study focuses on the experimental validation of the neutronic design reliability of the supercritical CO2-cooled lithium-lead (COOL) blanket developed for the China fusion engineering test reactor (CFETR). For this purpose, an experimental mock-up was designed and fabricated to replicate the key neutronics characteristics of COOL blanket. The mock-up was irradiated using D–T neutron generator and validated using multiple techniques: tritium production rate (TPR) online monitoring with a miniature back-to-back lithium glass scintillator detector, TPR integral measurement using Li2CO3 pellets analyzed by liquid scintillation counting (LSC), and neutron flux measurement with activation foils (Au, Zr). To enhance accuracy, corrections were applied for lithium-lead (PbLi) segregation based on element analysis and for neutron source intensity based on in-situ depth profiling of tritium in the tritide target. The results show excellent agreement between experiments and simulations, with calculation-to-experimental (C/E) value ranging from 0.96 to 1.11 for TPR measured by lithium-glass scintillator detectors, 0.90–1.09 for TPR by Li2CO3 pellets, and 0.84–1.13 for reaction rates measured by activation foils.
Evaluation of tritium production rate in a blanket mock-up using a compact fusion neutron source