Blanket design for the ARIES-I tokamak reactor

Abstract

For the ARIES-I tokamak power reactor design, we evaluated two gas-cooled, low-activation ceramic blanket designs, a 5 MPa helium-cooled design, and a 0.5 MPa CO2 gascarried Li4Si04 particulate design. The more extensive data base available for the helium-cooled option has led to the selection of this option as our reference design. The selected ARIES4 blanket design uses Sic composite as the structural material, 5 MPa helium as the coolant, Li4SiO4 as the solid tritium breeder, and Be metal pellets as the neutron multiplier. This combination of materials provides the design of a high nuclear performance blanket with high outlet temperature, good neutron multiplication, and adequate tritium breeding. It is a low-activation design that satisfies the criteria for 10CFR61 Class-C shallow land waste disposal and achieves inherent safety since it produces negligible afterheat, thus virtually eliminating the possibility of radioactivity release to the public.

ARIES tokamak reactor study

“…The ARIES-I blanket is made of SiC/SiC composite struc tural material, is cooled by He at 5 MPa and includes Be neutron multiplier and Li^SiO* solid breeder [20]. The SiC/SiC compos ite allows a high operating temperature operation and features very low activation and very low decay-afterheat characterisitics.…”

“…Fourth, CURRENT DRIVER SELECTION Many factors are taken into consideration in selecting a suitable current driver for ARIES-I. Among them, the effi ciency of the current driver, measured by the figure of merit -i i = n|10 20…”