Ponente
Descripción
In the development of breeding blankets for fusion power plants, it is crucial to create material irradiation environments that reproduce fusion-relevant neutron spectra and fluences. IFMIF-DONES will provide an irradiation environment with neutron energies and fluxes relevant to fusion applications, enabling the assessment of materials and components under conditions closer to those expected in future fusion power plants.
Various structural materials are being developed for fusion power plant breeding blankets, including reduced-activation ferritic/martensitic (RAFM) steels, V-alloys, and SiCf/SiC composites. Kyoto Fusioneering (KF) is conducting R&D on these materials, focusing on their interactions with several liquid metal and molten salt coolants, and the effects of neutron irradiation. Since most available irradiation data originate from fission neutron environments, evaluation of material-coolant systems under fusion-relevant environments at IFMIF-DONES is essential.
As one of blanket type, KF's Self-Cooled Yuryo Lithium-Lead Advanced (SCYLLA©) used SiCf/SiC structural material [1] is presented. Recent progress in the blanket are engineering designs, neutronics performance and tritium extraction technologies. In addition, it is conducted the R&D works on the material compatibility of SiCf/SiC. Focus is given to ongoing design maturation activities, including remote handling considerations, manufacturability assessments, and developments aimed at supporting future demonstration-relevant blanket testing and commercial fusion deployment. Through the discussion of neutron irradiation experimental plannings for SiCf/SiC components intended for SCYLLA, it will be established methodologies that can also be applied to other materials, such as RAFM and V-based alloys.
Numerical simulation works of a Neutron Source Package for OpenMC under DONES Irradiation target are also conducted. The source code has been generated from detailed deuterium (D)-lithium (Li) cross-sectional area calculations independently performed using PHITS + JENDL/DEU-2020 and MCNP6 + McDeLicious, and is presented alongside a simple benchmark exercise. The results demonstrate that the strong correlation between neutron energy and emission angle with respect to the Li target can be successfully reproduced in OpenMC, enabling representative IFMIF-DONES neutronics simulations with a practical level of accuracy, based on a joint collaboration by IFMIF-DONES Spain, KIT, and KF.
Keywords: IFMIF-DONES; fusion blanket; SCYLLA; lithium-lead; SiCf/SiC composites; neutron irradiation; tritium extraction; materials compatibility; neutronics modelling; OpenMC.
[1] L. Candido et al., “Preliminary design of the self-cooled lithium-lead SCYLLA blanket for a spherical tokamak,” Fusion Engineering and Design, vol. 223, Art. no. 115574, Dec. 2025, doi: 10.1016/j.fusengdes.2025.115574.