Blanket Coolant and Heat Recovery
The blanket carries away the neutron and radiated power it captures; coolant choice couples to breeder chemistry and tritium recovery.
Carrying the power out
Neutrons deposit most of their energy as heat in the blanket, along with radiated power from the plasma. That heat must be removed continuously to keep materials within limits. In the breeder, whose purpose is products rather than electricity, heat handling still matters because it sets material temperatures and drives tritium behavior.
Coolant is not independent
Coolant choice is tied to the breeder form. A liquid-metal or molten-salt breeder can be its own coolant and carry tritium out with it; a solid breeder needs a separate coolant, often helium or water, plus a purge to sweep tritium. Each option changes structural-material compatibility and the tritium-extraction scheme.
- Neutrons deposit most of their energy as heat in the blanket.
- Self-cooled liquid breeders combine coolant and tritium carrier.
- Separately-cooled solid breeders need a tritium purge stream.
- Coolant sets material temperatures and corrosion requirements.
Why it belongs in the materials story
Coolant temperature drives whether structural steels and refractories stay within their limits, and coolant chemistry drives corrosion and tritium permeation. Heat recovery is therefore a materials-and-chemistry decision in the breeder, coupled to breeding and extraction rather than separable from them.
Temperature windows
Every material in the blanket has a temperature window: too cold and some reactions or extraction slow, too hot and structure creeps or corrodes faster. Coolant flow and temperature are set to keep breeder, multiplier, and structure each within their windows simultaneously, which is a tighter constraint than simply removing the deposited power.
This page documents a design and simulation study, not a built machine. Construction begins Q2 2027; first-of-a-kind first tritium is targeted near 2030. Figures are computed, reproducible targets, not measurements.