AbstractThe limitations on the performance of breeding blankets in a fusion power plant are evaluated. The breeding blankets will be key components of a plant and their limitations with regard to power density, thermal efficiency and lifetime could determine to a large degree the attractiveness of a power plant. The performance of two rather well known blanket concepts under development in the frame of the European Blanket Programme is assessed and their limitations are compared with more advanced (and more speculative) concepts. An important issue is the question of which material (structure, breeder, multiplier, coatings) will limit the performance and what improvement would be possible with a ‘better’ structural material. This evaluation is based on the premise that the performance of the power plant will be limited by the blankets (including first wall) and not by other components, e.g. divertors, or the plasma itself. However, the justness of this premise remains to be seen. It is shown that the different blanket concepts cover a large range of allowable power densities and achievable thermal efficiencies, and it is concluded that there is a high incentive to go for better performance in spite of possibly higher blanket cost. However, such high performance blankets are usually based on materials and technologies not yet developed and there is a rather high risk that the development could fail. Therefore, it is explained that a part of the development effort should be devoted to concepts where the materials and technologies are more or less in hand in order to ensure that blankets for a DEMO reactor can be developed and tested in a given time frame.
核聚变发电厂中增殖包层的性能限制被评估。增殖包层将是核聚变发电厂的关键部件，其在功率密度、热效率和寿命方面的限制可能在很大程度上决定该发电厂的吸引力。欧洲增殖包层计划中正在开发的两种较为成熟的包层概念的性能被评估，并将其限制与更先进（但更具推测性）的概念进行了比较。一个重要的问题是，哪种材料（结构材料、增殖材料、中子倍增材料、涂层）将限制性能，以及使用“更好的”结构材料可能带来何种改进。该评估基于以下前提：核聚变发电厂的性能将受到包层（包括第一壁）的限制，而非其他部件（如偏滤器）或等离子体本身的限制。然而，这一前提的正确性仍有待验证。结果表明，不同的包层概念在允许的功率密度和可达到的热效率方面覆盖了广泛的范围，并得出结论：尽管包层成本可能更高，但追求更高性能具有很大的吸引力。然而，此类高性能包层通常依赖于尚未开发成熟的材料和技术，存在较高的开发失败风险。因此，应解释说明，部分开发工作应投入到材料和技术基本已掌握的概念上，以确保在给定时间框架内能够开发和测试用于DEMO反应堆的包层。