The ARIES-II and ARIES-IV second-stability tokamak reactors

The ARIES research program is a multi-institutional effort to develop several visions of tokamak reactors with enhanced economic, safety, and environmental features. Four ARIES visions are currently planned for the ARIES program. The ARIES-I design is a DT-burning reactor based on modest extrapolations from the present tokamak physics database and relies on either existing technology or technology for which trends are already in place, often in programs outside fusion. The ARIES-III study focuses on the potential of tokamaks to operate with D-3He fuel system as an alternative to deuterium and tritium. The ARIES-II and ARIES-IV designs have the same fusion plasma but different fusion-power-core designs. The ARIES-II reactor uses liquid lithium as the coolant and tritium breeder and vanadium alloy as the structural material in order to study the potential of low-activation metallic blankets. The ARIES-IV reactor uses helium as the coolant, a solid tritium-breeding material, and silicon carbide composite as the structural material in order to achieve the safety and environmental characteristic of fusion. In this paper the authors describe the trade-off leading to the optimum regime of operation for the ARIES-II and ARIES-IV second-stability reactors and review the engineering design of the fusion power cores