Economic Consequences of Fusion Materials Development
نویسندگان
چکیده
The programme of qualification and improvement of materials for use in a fusion power station is crucial to the introduction of fusion power into the energy market and power plant studies are used to guide the targets for materials development. It is common to mis-interpret these targets as minimum values that must be achieved for fusion power to be a viable energy source, implying that failure to fully meet these targets will prevent fusion from playing a role in future. It remains important to improve materials properties but this must always be considered in context by an integrated power plant design in which all aspects are consistent. Rather than making fusion an impossibility, different levels of materials performance will lead to a different design in which their use is optimised, for instance compensating reduced lifetime neutron fluence by power density and machine size. Such trade-offs are an economic issue and relatively large variations in materials properties can be accommodated with small changes in overall cost of electricity. The full material impacts are much more complex than just the tolerance to neutron damage, and these must all be considered in a fully integrated way. Of particular importance are the tolerance to heat load, the combined effects of operating temperature and neutron load, which can impact on thermodynamic efficiency, the compatibility of different materials and their phase stability over the characteristic timescale of continuous operation of a power plant.
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