Radiation damage study on various first wall materials of a magnetic fusion reactor using heavy metal salt

Abstract

One of the major magnetic fusion reactor designs is called APEX that uses a protective flowing liquid wall to attain high neutron wall loads and to eliminate frequent replacement of first wall structures due to radiation damage during reactor operation. A radiation damage study was carried out at first wall structures for different low activation materials, vanadium alloy (V-4Cr-4Ti), ferritic steel (9Cr2VWTa) and SiCf/SiC composite in APEX fusion reactor using heavy metal molten salt consisting of Flibe + 10% UF4. Neutronic calculations were carried out with the help of the code Scale4.3 by solving Boltz-mann neutron transport equation. Numerical results pointed out that ferritic steel showed the best performance among the investigated materials with respect to radiation damage behavior.