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Behaviour of advanced tritium breeder pebbles under simultaneous action of accelerated electrons and high temperature

The authors greatly acknowledge the technical and experimen-tal support of O. Valtenbergs and L. Avotina (Institute of Chemical Physics, University of Latvia). The work is performed in the frames of the University of Latvia financed project No. Y9-B044-ZF-N-300, “Nano, Quantum Technologies, and Innovative Materials for Eco-nomics”.

Overview of the HCPB Research Activities in EUROfusion

In the framework of the EUROfusion’s Power Plant Physics and Technology, the working package breeding blanket (BB) aims at investigating four different BB concepts for an EU demonstration fusion reactor (DEMO). One of these concepts is the helium-cooled pebble bed (HCPB) BB, which is based on the use of pebble beds of lithiated ternary compounds and Be or beryllides as tritium breeder and multiplier materials, respectively, EUROFER97 as structural steel and He as coolant. This paper aims at giving an overview of the EU HCPB BB Research and Development (R&D) being developed at KIT, in collaboration with Wigner-RCP, BUTE-INT, and CIEMAT. The paper gives an outline of the HCPB BB design evolut…

Chemical compatibility of bulk alumina in flowing PbLi alloy under magnetic field

Abstract Electrically insulating flow channel inserts (FCI) may be needed in liquid-based breeding blanket concepts to electrically decouple the metal flow from the strong magnetic field in a future fusion reactor. Although the magnetohydrodynamic simulation demonstrates a reduction of the pressure drop when a sandwich-like steel-alumina-steel FCI is employed, the tritium production efficiency in the breeding zone of a breeding blanket is limited to 550 °C due to the steel corrosion. Previous theoretical thermomechanical analyses point out the possible occurrence of induced interfacial stresses between the steel and the ceramic part. Both factors motivate the actual FCI development towards …