This conference paper was submitted for presentation at the NAFEMS World Congress 2025, held in Salzburg, Austria from May 19–22, 2025.

Abstract

The successful development of fusion power will rely on the key technology of breeder blanket components. These components surround the fusion plasma, providing significant heat for power generation, and breeding the tritium fuel on which the plasma reaction depends. However, the technology for these components remains at a low technology readiness level '“ many concept designs have been developed for the ITER test programme and for subsequent powerplant demonstrators, but none has yet been tested in an operational tokamak environment. This harsh environment includes multiple heat loads, the impact of plasma disruption events and high neutron fluence from the plasma. Successful designs must withstand the loads imparted while demonstrating high performance for tritium and heat generation. Designs must also be tailored to different tokamak configurations and differing programme priorities. In this project concept evaluation and down-selection were achieved using a systems-engineering approach to systematically gather requirements, generate concepts and then down-select. A key part of this was utilising systems simulation and analysis workflows. This enabled a consistent evaluation across the large number of different blanket designs and material options at an appropriate fidelity for the design stage. Linking systems simulation, modelling the hydraulic, thermal and structural aspects, with neutronics analysis for the tritium breeding performance enabled consideration of the integrated problem and the trade-offs within the competing requirements of the breeder blankets. The analysis workflows have utilised existing COTS solutions, integrating the neutronics software and systems simulation, while maximising the benefit from the existing algorithms and methods implemented in the tool. A library for systems simulation has been developed, building the representation of blanket concepts from base elements implementing 0D and quasi-1D models. This approach extends the applicability of the library to enable the analysis of other components, within and outside of fusion. The systems-simulation library, ARTEMIS, and analysis workflows will be presented alongside the leading concepts and their performance, demonstrating the benefit of this approach for the concept down-selection of complex and novel systems.