Blanket material and engineering issues, and requirements for experiments and facilities

Abstract

Fusion nuclear technology components face a new and tougher environment than experienced by any previous nuclear application. The development of feasible and attractive fusion nuclear components will require a broad research effort including experiments, model development and innovative designs. In order to provide an efficient strategy, the important issues must be identified and characterized, and required experiments and facilities must be defined. This paper considers the experiments needed to solve the uncertainties associated with liquid breeder and solid breeder blankets. Many of these uncertainties are strongly material-related and involve a number of areas ranging from basic material properties under irradiation to highly interactive phenomena involving several materials, components and/or environmental conditions. They can be addressed in a number of progressively more integrated experiments. Test facilities to investigate these uncertainties range from simple bench-top experiments, to large non-nuclear tests, fission reactors and point neutron sources, and fusion test facilities. Possible experiments and facilities have been analyzed in a timeframe consistent with the present US goal of supporting an assessment of the feasibility and attractiveness of fusion around the year 2000.