Blanket Concept of Water-Cooled Lithium Lead with Beryllium for the SlimCS Fusion DEMO Reactor

Abstract

As an advanced option for SlimCS blanket, conceptual design study of water-cooled lithium lead (WCLL) blanket was performed. In SlimCS, the net tritium breeding ratio (TBR) supplied from WCLL blanket was not enough because the thickness of blanket in SlimCS was limited to about 0.5 m so as to allocate the conducting shell position near the plasma for high beta access and vertical stability of plasma. Therefore, the beryllium (Be) pebble bed was adopted as additional multiplier to reach a required TBR (≥ 1.05). Considering the operating temperature of blanket materials, a double pipe structure was adopted. The nuclear and thermal analysis were carried out by a nuclear-thermal-coupled code, ANIHEAT and DOHEAT so that blanket materials were appropriately arranged to satisfy the acceptable operation temperatures. The temperatures of materials were kept in appropriate range for the neutron wall load Pn = 5 MW/m2. It was found that the local TBR of WCLL with Be blanket was comparable with that of solid breeder blanket.