Speaker
Description
UKAEA is advancing the design and experimental readiness of scaled mock-ups for breeding blanket concepts through its contributions to the EUROfusion Work Package Breeder Blanket (WPBB). A major challenge in breeder blanket R&D is the absence of reactor-relevant experimental platforms capable of simultaneously reproducing the coupled thermal, hydraulic, magnetic and structural environments representative of future fusion plants. To address this, UKAEA has developed an experimental plan based on the dimensionless scaling of incremental blanket-like geometries which enables fusion relevant Proto-typical Mock Ups (PMUs) that reproduce key operating and fault condition parameters.
Work applicable for the Water-Cooled Lead-Lithium (WCLL) concept has included geometry definition, manufacturability assessment, material selection, and evaluation of long-term degradation mechanisms such as corrosion and erosion in flowing PbLi under magnetic fields. In parallel, UKAEA has advanced tritium extraction R&D by developing new hydraulic and mass-transfer models for PbLi-He counter-current flows, enabling full-system design of plant tritium extraction units and by progressing modelling of Permeation Against Vacuum (PAV) vacuum systems and optimisation of the Gas Liquid Contactor (GLC) planned for the WCLL-TBM in ITER. To support these experiments, UKAEA has also developed a large capacity PbLi loop, addressing challenges in coolant compatibility, high-temperature instrumentation, operational control and maintainability and ensuring compliance with industrial safety and design standards. Last but not least, since the design cannot be fully verified through experimental studies, within EUROfusion’s Work Package Materials we are developing the European DEMO Design Criteria for In-Vessel Components (DDC-IC) to support design assessment, iteration, and verification via finite element simulation. To strengthen the link between WPBB and WPMAT, a dedicated structural integrity assessment of HCPB has been carried out to facilitate information exchange between the WPBB design and the development of DDC-IC under more representative operational conditions.
Combined with the multi-physics capability of CHIMERA and dedicated fusion-specific design criteria, this methodology enables the first integrated, fusion-relevant blanket experiments and assessments of their kind. This provides a platform that can bridge the gap between single-physics lab-scale experiments and the operational demands of DEMO paving the way for continued breeding blanket development for future reactors.
| Speaker affiliation | UKAEA |
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