Speaker
Description
One of the priorities at Kyoto Fusioneering is breeding blanket design and build. To achieve this, we are actively developing different blanket designs in-house, working alongside UKAEA, LIBRTI, and private fusion partners. Our research and development efforts are shaped by uncertainties in both design and manufacturing processes. As a result, we established UNITY-1 -a non-nuclear integrated testing facility- for mechanical, CFD, and MHD studies, as well as UNITY-2 -a nuclear facility- for component testing with tritium and tritium extraction from breeder materials, including tests of the integrated inner fuel cycle.
At UNITY-1, we are testing lithium-lead through a 4-tesla magnetic field at temperatures up to 1000 °C, using two heat exchangers and a 20 kW Brayton cycle for power generation. The ongoing experiments focus on simple geometries within the magnetic field before progressing to more complex blanket mock-ups.
Construction of UNITY-2 has begun; its detailed design phase is nearly finished, and many components have already been acquired. We have scheduled the facility's commissioning for late 2026. Notably, a glove box housing the liquid metal loop has been upgraded from the UNITY-1 version, making it fully compatible with tritium but still able to provide data at relevant experimental scales.
Findings from these projects are also applicable to liquid metal testing at LIBRTI, which augments our program with opportunities for irradiation studies, tritium breeding, and real-time tritium transport investigations for blanket components.
This overview summarizes ongoing facility activities and their role in reducing uncertainties associated with breeding blanket design and testing in neutron environments like those at LIBRTI.
| Speaker affiliation | Kyoto Fusioneering |
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