RAMI: The main challenge of fusion nuclear technologies

RAMI (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Inspectability) is one of the most severe challenges of Fusion Technologies, and it is probably the engineering branch where the fusion community is the least competent. This paper summarizes the RAMI statistics in existing fusion machines, the RAMI approaches adopted in ITER and in DEMO, and the expected availability targets in these two machines. The paper then discusses these approaches and targets and recommends adopting a Reliability Growth program for future fusion devices.