Challenges towards an acceleration in stellarator reactors engineering: The dual coolant lithium–lead breeding blanket helical-axis advanced stellarator case

Iole Palermo, Javier Alguacil, Juan Pablo Catalán, Iván Fernández-Berceruelo, Jorrit Lion, Jose Ángel Noguerón Valiente, David Sosa, David Rapisarda, Fernando R. Urgorri, Felix Warmer and Richard Kembleton

Energy, 2024, vol. 289, issue C

Abstract: Under the ambitious EUROfusion mission of “bringing the stellarator line to technological maturity”, the development of a Dual Coolant Lithium–Lead (DCLL) Breeding Blanket (BB) for a Helical-Axis Advanced Stellarator (HELIAS) started. The BB is the crucial systems to achieve tritium self-sufficiency in fusion power plants. The DCLL has potentialities to answer the challenges posed by complex HELIAS configuration, having liquid breeder and decoupled first wall (FW) and breeding zone circuits. Both characteristics are being empowered to simplify remote maintenance and integration of the BB segments. Hence, a “quasi-toroidal” BB segmentation has been proposed to minimize the magnetohydrodynamic pressure drop eschewing complex electrical insulating components while hindering maintenance. Such controversy motivated the use of a detached FW small panels manageable through ports. On this basis, a decoupled Capillary Porous System FW has been assessed under thermal-hydraulics and neutronics point of view. Moreover, ad-hoc tools have been developed for the parametrization of models and convergence toward a viable DCLL HELIAS design, speeding-up the coupling of computer-aided design modelling and analyses. Such novel strategies are described in view of a potential acceleration of the stellarator reactor engineering and by providing an overview of the stellarator challenges inside a global context.

Keywords: Nuclear fusion; Stellarator; DCLL breeding blanket; Multi-physics; 3D tools (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:289:y:2024:i:c:s0360544223033649

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2023.129970

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