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Securing the advanced reactor fleet
Physical protection accounts for a significant portion of a nuclear power plant’s operational costs. As the U.S. moves toward smaller and safer advanced reactors, similar protection strategies could prove cost prohibitive. For tomorrow’s small modular reactors and microreactors, security costs must remain appropriate to the size of the reactor for economical operation.
Jochen Linke
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 2 | February 2012 | Pages 246-255
Edge Physics and Exhaust | Proceedings of the Tenth Carolus Magnus Summer School on Plasma and Fusion Energy Physics | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A13511
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The first wall and the divertor in present-day or next step thermonuclear fusion devices are exposed to intense fluxes of charged and neutral particles, in addition the plasma facing materials and components are subjected to radiation in a wide spectral range. These processes, in general referred to as `plasma wall interaction' will have strong influence on the plasma performance, and moreover, they have major impact on the degradation and on the lifetime of the plasma facing armour and the joining interface between the plasma facing material and the heat sink. Beside physical and chemical sputtering processes, thermal fatigue damage due to cyclic heat fluxes during normal operation and intense thermal shocks caused by severe thermal transients are of serious concern for the engineers which develop reliable wall components. In addition, the material and component degradation due to high fluxes of energetic neutrons is another critical issue in D-T-burning fusion devices which requires further extensive research activities. This paper represents a tutorial focussed on the development and characterization of plasma facing components for thermonuclear fusion devices.