Princeton Reference Design Fusion Power Plant

The Princeton Reference Design Fusion Power Plant is an electrical generating station based upon a large Tokamak confining a D-T plasma. The plasma major and minor radii are nominally 10.5 m by 3.2 m; the toroidal field at the center-line is 6 T. With a mean ion temperature of 30 keV, an average β of 0.04, and an average tau of 3.83 s a fusion power of 3440 MW is achieved during 97 minutes of the 100 minute long-pulse cycle. The plasma throughput of 2.8 x 1022 ions/s is deflected down a divertor channel where it cools by radiation and is neutralized, exhausting as hot gas to the vacuum pumps. The total thermal power of 5305 MW is carried by a helium coolant to a conventional steam cycle producing 2030 MWe net. Tritium is bred in an 80 cm thick blanket of eutectic flibe (53.1 percent beryllium fluoride and 46.9 percent lithium fluoride) with Nimonic PE-16 (43 percent nickel, 39 percent iron, 18 percent chromium) as the structural material; the blanket-averaged volume fractions are 69.8 percent flibe, 9.4 percent PE-16, and 20.8 percent helium. The breeding ratio of 1.04 will allow doubling of the 2.57 kg inventory in 121 days. The nominal wall load of 1.76 MW of DT neutrons per m implies a total flux of 8.65 x 1018 n/m2.s at the wall and a corresponding helium production rate of 275 ppm/year. (auth)