Conceptual Design of a Helium-Cooled Ceramic Breeder Blanket for CFETR

The China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR) is a superconducting tokamak reactor proposed by the China National Integration Design Group. The aim is to develop China’s next-step fusion device. A helium-cooled ceramic breeder (HCCB) blanket concept has been put forward by the blanket integration design team of the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The present blanket configuration is based on the upper port dimension and maintenance scheme. The HCCB blanket comprises a U-shaped first wall, cap, breeder unit, middle plate, and back plate. The breeder unit includes a cooling plate, beryllium pebble bed, and lithium silicate pebble bed. The structure of the HCCB blanket concept is obviously different from the ITER HCCB test blanket module of China. The CFETR HCCB blanket will meet the requirements of CFETR long-pulse or steady-state operation with a duty cycle time greater than 0.3. The maintenance scheme of the blanket is introduced in this paper. Three-dimensional neutronic analysis results show that the tritium breeding ratio can satisfy the design requirement. Besides, the thermal-hydraulic behavior of the first wall has been studied using ANSYS CFX code.