Study of design parameters for minimizing the cost of electricity of tokamak fusion power reactors

Abstract

The impact of the design parameters on the cost of electricity (COE) is studied through a parameter survey in order to minimize the COE. Three kinds of operating modes are considered; first stability (FS), second stability (SS) and reversed shear (RS). The COE is calculated by a coupled physics-engineering-cost computer system code. Deuterium-tritium type, 1000 MW(e) at electric bus bar, steady state tokamak reactors with aspect ratios A from 3 to 4.5 are assumed. Several criteria are used for the parameter survey; for example, (a) the thermal to electrical conversion efficiency is assumed to be 34.5% using water as a coolant; (b) the average neutron wall load must not exceed 5 MW/m2 for plasma major radius Rp > 5 m; (c) a 2 MeV neutral beam injector (NBI) is applied. It is found that the RS operating mode most minimizes the COE among the three operating modes by reducing the cost of the current drive and the coils and structures. The cost-minimized RS reactor can attain high fbs, high βN and low q95 at the same time, which results in a short Rp of 5.1 m, a low Bmax of the maximum magnetic toroidal field (TF) of the TF coils of 13 T and a low A of 3.0. It can be concluded that this cost-minimized RS reactor is the most cost-minimized within the frameworks of this study. This cost-minimized RS reactor has two advantages: one is that a Bmax = 13 T TF coil can be made by use of ITER coil technology and the other is that the same cooling technology as that of ITER (water cooling) can be used.