Abstract

The replacement of the burning of fossil fuels in power plants with other forms of clean energy, for example, that of a tokamak fusion reactor employing the deuterium-tritium cycle, like ITER, would contribute enormously to the mitigation of climate change. Unfortunately, for such a type of fusion reactor, we expect the neutrons, which carry 80% of the fusion power with energies seven times larger than those of neutrons of fission reactors, to cause serious radiation damage with possible fracture of the blanket modules and the reactor wall. Hence, before contemplating the use of tokamaks for replacing fossil fuels of conventional power plants, we need a thorough investigation of the damage caused by neutrons in high-power tokamak reactors. Unfortunately, ITER will not provide any exhaustive information since it is neither a high power density tokamak nor a reactor. However, a rise in toroidal magnetic field by a factor of 2 would bring the fusion power of ITER to 8 GW and allow an investigation of the damage caused by neutrons to internal components and the reactor wall.

摘要

用其他形式的清洁能源替代发电厂中的化石燃料燃烧，例如使用氘-氚循环的托卡马克聚变反应堆，如 ITER，将对缓解气候变化做出巨大贡献。不幸的是，对于这种类型的聚变反应堆，我们预计携带 80% 聚变功率且能量是裂变反应堆中子能量的 7 倍的中子会造成严重的辐射损害，可能会导致覆盖模块破裂和反应器壁。因此，在考虑使用托卡马克替代常规发电厂的化石燃料之前，我们需要彻底调查中子在大功率托卡马克反应堆中造成的损害。很遗憾，ITER 不会提供任何详尽的信息，因为它既不是高功率密度托卡马克，也不是反应堆。然而，环形磁场增加 2 倍将使 ITER 的聚变功率达到 8 GW，并允许调查中子对内部组件和反应堆壁造成的损坏。