European ceramic B.I.T. blanket for DEMO: Recent development for the zirconate version
- DRN/DMT/SERMA, Gif-sur-Yvette (France)
Within the framework of the European test-blanket program, CEA and ENEA are jointly developing a DEMO-relevant, helium-cooled, Breeder-Inside-Tube (BIT) ceramic blanket. Two ceramics are possible breeder material candidate: LiAlO{sub 2} and Li{sub 2}ZrO{sub 3}. Despite the design has been originally developed for aluminate, the CEA has recently focused its work on zirconate. This concept blanket segments are made by a directly-cooled vacuum-tight steel box which contains banana-shaped poloidal breeder modules arranged in rows (6 rows in an outboard segment and 4 rows in an inboard one). A breeder module consists of a pressure vessel containing a bundle of breeder rods surrounded by baffles. Each one of the rods is made-up of a steel tube containing a stack of annular pellets of sintered lithium-zirconate, through which flows helium (the tritium purge gas). The thermo-mechanical analysis has shown that the thermal gradient in the ceramics can be kept at acceptable levels despite the poorer out-of-pile thermo-mechanical properties of zirconate compared to aluminate. Moreover, the neutronic analysis has shown that, besides the maintained tritium-breeding self-sufficiency capability of this blanket, the lower lithium burn-up could be an indication that the zirconate characteristics remains more stable after long term irradiation (i.e., close to the end-of-life fluence of 5 MWa/m{sup 2}).
- OSTI ID:
- 197000
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-940664--
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Status of EC solid breeder blanket designs and R&D for DEMO fusion reactors
Performance of ceramic breeder materials in the SIBELIUS experiment