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Playing the “bad guy” to enhance next-generation safety
Sometimes, cops and robbers is more than just a kid’s game. At the Department of Energy’s national laboratories, researchers are channeling their inner saboteurs to discover vulnerabilities in next-generation nuclear reactors, making sure that they’re as safe as possible before they’re even constructed.
Yuri Igitkhanov, Boris Bazylev
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 1 | July 2011 | Pages 349-353
Materials Development & Plasma-Material Interactions | Proceedings of the Nineteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE) (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12378
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We have estimated the energy deposition of runaway electrons into the tungsten/EUROFER blanket structure for reactor DEMO conditions and calculated the consequent level of thermal erosion. Our simulations indicate that the heat generated by runaway electrons may pose a major lifetime limitation for the W armor. We find that the minimum thickness of W necessary to prevent EUROFER from stress destruction at high temperatures, min, could be already too large for an efficient cooling. Tungsten layers of thickness min would erode by surface melting and vaporization since the thermal conductivity time is much larger than expected exposure time to runaways.