Economical and life-cycle energy assessment of magnetic fusion power reactors

We analyzed several types of fusion reactors, tokamak (TR), spherical tokamak (ST), helical (HR), and inertial fusion reactor (IR) using physics, engineering and cost (PEC) code, which evaluates economic and lifecycle energy amount quantitatively. We compared the cost of electricity (COE) and the energy payback ratio (EPR) of each fusion reactors with those of fission power plant. Especially, we focus on the EPR of TR with several blanket and shield designs having scarce materials such as silicon carbide (SiC), vanadium alloy (V), and ferritic steel (FS). As the result, we found that the EPR of TR with SiC/LiPb blanket/shield model is the lowest. The COEs and the input energy of TR (β_N = 4.0) and IR are lower than those of ST and HR. The COE of fusion reactor is two times higher than that of fission power plants. However the EPR of fusion reactor is as high as that of fission reactor. (author)