Reprocessing of lithium orthosilicate breeder material by remelting

For the reuse of ceramic breeder materials in fusion technology, the possibility to recycle these materials is a precondition and an important issue due to the high costs of 6Li-enriched materials and waste considerations. For lithium orthosilicate pebbles, fabricated by a melt-spraying process, the remelting was investigated, as it represents a facile reprocessing process without an additional recycling step. For this purpose, Li4SiO4 pebbles with a lithium content according to expected DEMO end-of-life burn-ups were fabricated and then remelted with an addition of lithium hydroxide hydrate to gain the composition of the usual reference material with a surplus of 2.5 wt% SiO2. It could be demonstrated, that the remelting process does not deteriorate the properties of the pebbles.