Early developments of ceramic breeder blanket con­cepts were based on fission reactor technologies, and the R&D activities concentrated on pellet or pin type specimens. An example is the European BIT project, using machined annular pellets or pins.2-5

Figure 3 shows a schematic view of the BIT concept, based on stacking annular pellets of

LiAlO2, enriched up to 90% 6Li, operating at tem­peratures between 400 and 600 °C.5 Li2ZrO3 was considered as an alternative material, which has been further developed at the Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique (CEA)29

Other breeding concepts using machined shapes have been developed, for example, in the Russian Federation,30 and recently Sharafat et al31 proposed shaping the breeder ceramic as foams.

In this chapter, only a few R&D results with pel­lets or pins are mentioned.