Progress on design and related R&D activities for the water-cooled breeder blanket for CFETR

Abstract

The water-cooled ceramic breeder (WCCB) blanket is one of the blanket candidates for Chinese fusion engineering testing reactor (CFETR) and is being developed at the Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP). This paper reviews design and evolution of the WCCB blanket for CFETR, and presents a new WCCB blanket design according to the latest CFETR core parameters (major and minor radii are R = 7.2 m and a = 2.2 m, respectively) and missions. This new design is expected to satisfy multiple CFETR operation modes of 0.2, 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 GW fusion power and achieve tritium self-sufficiency. The feasibility of the updated blanket design is evaluated from the aspects of neutronics and thermo-hydraulics. Furthermore, the research and development (R&D) activities supporting to the WCCB blanket for CFETR are reported, including the design code, the water loop experiments, the pebble bed modeling and experiments, and the components fabrication technology.