U.S. Solid Breeder Blanket Design for ITER

The U.S. blanket design activity has focused on the developments and the analyses of a solid breeder blanket concept for ITER. The main function of this blanket is to produce the necessary tritium required for the ITER operation and the test program. Safety, power reactor relevance, low tritium inventory, and design flexibility are the main reasons for the blanket selection. The blanket is designed to operate satisfactorily in the physics and the technology phases of ITER without the need for hardware changes. Mechanical simplicity, predictability, performance, minimum cost, and minimum R&D requirements are the other criteria used to guide the design process. The design aspects of the blanket are summarized in this paper.