MHD Flow Control as a Design Approach for Self-Cooled Liquid-Metal Blankets of Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactors

A self-cooled, liquid-metal blanket for a magnetic confinement fusion reactor has generally been viewed as a conventional cooling system with the additional, negative effects of the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) interaction which must somehow be overcome. Recent studies of liquid-metal flows in strong magnetic fields have revealed the existence of characteristic surfaces in such flows. Pressure and voltage are constant to first order on these surfaces, while the surfaces are streamsurfaces for the fluid velocity. In the proposed design approach, these surfaces are used to create the flow patterns which absorb the heat where it is deposited and distribute it throughout the coolant. These MHD “guidevanes” can eliminate much of the complexity of previous blanket designs. Therefore, MHD effects are used as a positive design tool.