European development of the ITER divertor target

Abstract

The main European contribution to the ITER divertor project was the development of the divertor target with severe operating requirements such as peak heat loads of up to 20 MW/m 2. This development involving EU laboratories and industry included R&D on armour materials, thermo-hydraulics testing, component manufacture, high heat flux testing, design and manufacture of prototypes for later testing. The 4-year EU R&D effort achieved the demonstration of the feasibility of a robust divertor target design based on carbon and tungsten armour. This EU solution has eventually been adopted for the ITER reference design and could be valid also for other ITER high heat flux components such as limiters or baffles.