Potential and limits of water-cooled Pb–17Li blankets and divertors for a fusion power plant

Blankets and divertors are key components of a fusion power plant. They have a large impact on the overall plant design, its performance and availability, and on the cost of electricity. The water-cooled Pb–17Li (WCLL) blanket uses reduced activation ferritic–martensitic steel as structural material. It was previously validated under numerous aspects such as TBR, mechanical and thermo-mechanical stability, thermal–hydraulics, MHD, safety and others. This was done assuming the specifications for a European DEMOnstration reactor which were fixed back in 1989. A WCLL blanket would best be combined with a water-cooled divertor so that a single coolant could be used for the entire reactor. Several divertor designs were proposed recently. This paper investigates the applicability of the WCLL blanket concept and a water-cooled divertor in attractive power reactors with increased power densities compared with DEMO.