Engineering Design of the European DEMO HCPB Breeding Blanket Breeder Zone Mockup

Abstract

The Helium Cooled Pebble Bed (HCPB) breeding blanket is one of the two driver-blanket candidates for the European fusion demonstration power plant (EU DEMO) within the framework of the EUROfusion Consortium. As the EU DEMO program is going, testing of mockups becomes increasingly important. In this article, the engineering design of a first-ever breeder zone mockup of the EU DEMO HCPB breeding blanket is reported. The mockup will be tested in the high-pressure, high temperature, helium facility (HELOKA) at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. This mockup will act as a test rig to validate heat transfer correlations, CFD software, and thermal hydraulics systems codes. As pressure equipment, the mockup shall conform to the latest European Union Pressure Equipment Directive 2014/68/EU. The design description, rationale and test matrix, and corresponding analyses are discussed and presented.