CIEMAT experimental proposal on lithium ignition in support of DONES licensing (LiFIRE facility)

Abstract

In the DEMO-Oriented NEutron Source (DONES) facility, it is expected to use a considerable amount of lithium at an average temperature higher than 300 °C. It is well known that lithium can produce exothermic reactions with several media, generating corrosive and toxic (upon burning) reaction products and with the potential risk of mobilizing radionuclides in little amounts. As a result, lithium represents a hazardous material which must be safely handled under normal operation and, especially, potential accident conditions which involve lithium spills and radioactive releases.Although the burning behavior of lithium has been studied for several decades, there is still a wide dispersion of data regarding its actual ignition temperature. Generally, measurements of the spontaneous or induced ignition temperature of a leakage of molten lithium, pool/spray type, depend on several factors such as metal purity, gas atmosphere composition and relative humidity, sample size or geometrical aspects, and even different treatments, apparatus, and techniques used.A dedicated experimental facility, called “LiFIRE”, is currently under development at the National Fusion Laboratory of CIEMAT with the purpose to quantitatively support the DONES safety analysis on the fire risk in case of lithium leakages, based on the Defense-in-Depth principle, i.e. prevention, detection and mitigation.

Keywords

• Lithium
• Alkali metal
• Metal combustion
• Fire protection
• DONES
• Fusion safety