A review of the breeding blankets under study in Europe for testing in the Next European Torus is presented. In many concepts, the breeder modules are enclosed in boxes whose side walls in front of the plasma act as the first wall of the machine. Various types of breeder modules are investigated, involving both liquid and solid breeders, namely:-Pb17Li liquid breeder concepts, the coolant being either water or Pb17Li itself;-solid (ceramic) breeder concepts, the coolant being in all cases helium. The various ceramic concepts differ in the breeder/coolant arrangement (breeder-out-of-tube and breeder-in-tube), the orientation of the coolant tubes (poloidal or toroidal) and the breeder geometry (rods, plates or pebble bed).For each of these concepts the main design features are shown and the thermomechanical problems are discussed. The problems related to a coolant tube rupture are in many cases the most severe from the structural design point of view. The first wall box enclosing the breeder modules appears to be a weak secondary containment barrier.The liquid breeder-water cooled concept looks manageable from the thermal and structural design point of view. In the case of the self-cooled liquid breeder concept, the main problems are related to the magnetohydrodynamic effects. Solutions are envisaged to overcome these difficulties.In the case of ceramic breeders, the use of plates implies small dimensions in order to limit the thermal stresses and a poor exploitation of the permitted temperature operation window. Solutions involving rods associated with a multipass cooling scheme or pebble bed enable achievement of better thermomechanical conditions and, therefore, are preferred in the current investigations. However, they lead to design complications and require experimental verification which is in progress at the European laboratories.
Neutronic and thermal mechanical analyses of ITER-FEAT breeding blanket innovative design