Development and experiments of LiPb coolant technologies for fusion blanket in China

Abstract

The liquid lithium lead (LiPb) blanket concept has become a promising design for fusion reactor, for example, international thermonuclear experimental reactor (ITER) and the demonstration (DEMO) reactor. To promote the successful application of fusion energy, detailed studies on key issues of the LiPb blanket were performed, such as corrosion behavior, thermal hydraulics and coolant safety etc. Some experimental facilities needed for the key issue studies were designed and developed under the research program. The series LiPb experimental loops, named DRAGON, were developed in China, including the thermal convection loops DRAGON-I/II/III and the multi-functional experimental loop DRAGON-IV. To perform the integrated experiments under the multi-physical field conditions for DEMO blanket, a dual-coolant thermal integrated experimental loop DRAGON-V was built in 2017. It is a multi-functional test platform for the research and development (R&D) of key issues of liquid LiPb blanket to provide the necessary database for ITER and DEMO. Up to now, a lot of experiments have been performed to investigate the LiPb technologies, such as corrosion behaviors of structural materials both with and without magnetic field, corrosion resistance technology, magneto-hydrodynamics effect, and interaction between typical coolants during in-box loss of coolant accident etc. The results will support the R&D of the key techniques and the engineering design for ITER test blanket module and further DEMO.