Lithium-Cooled Blankets for Advanced Tokamaks

ABSTRACT

The reactors considered in the Tokamak Power Systems Studies (TPSS), with their reduced toroidal magnetic flux densities, increased aspect ratios, and moderate overall power outputs afford the possibility of significant improvements and simplification in the design of liquid-metal self-cooled blankets. In designing the first wall and blanket structural, thermal, and magnetohydrodynamic constraints must be satisfied simultaneously. A systematic approach to do so efficiently, and resulting design parameters are presented. Designs with separate limiters can achieve a neutron wall loading capability of about 5 MW/m² with bare structural walls near the first wall and insulated laminated construction in regions of low fluence only. When laminated wall construction is used in the first wall coolant channels, the neutron wall loading capability exceeds 10 MW/m2.