Tradeoffs between Improved Performance and Increased Cost of Advanced Materials in Commercial Power Plants

Advanced structural materials for fusion in-vessel components offer the promise of improved safety and environmental features as well as improved engineering performance, as characterized by high thermal conversion efficiency and high power density limits. However, the cost of advanced materials is expected to be much higher than that of more conventional steel-based alloys. Therefore, the economic advantage is limited. In this study, we compare a high-performance vanadium-based power plant and a lower-performance ferritic steel plant. Self-consistency is maintained through the use of the ARIES systems code. The tradeoffs include the effect of coolant outlet temperature on thermal conversion efficiency, power density limitations, component lifetime and availability. Ideally, comparisons should be made between fully-detailed design concepts. However, a rough systems-level analysis allows identification of the relative magnitude of the economic advantages expected from “high performance” materials.