Globally Unique New Facilities for Qualifying Wall Components for Fusion Devices
Expansion of high-temperature materials laboratory at Forschungszentrum Jülich launched
Jülich, 17 December 2019 – The inner walls of the reactors in fusion devices are exposed to extreme heat fluxes due to the fact that the plasma reaches temperatures of over 100 million degrees. Neutrons from the fusion process cause damage to the wall material’s microstructure, which has an adverse effect on the lifetime of the wall components. For now, this is still just a problem for the future: these stresses do not occur yet in fusion experiments today. This makes it all the more important to have test facilities where the conditions in future fusion devices can be simulated today – particularly for the ITER fusion reactor under construction in the south of France. In these test facilities, damage is deliberately caused to the material by conducting radiation experiments with neutrons before it is subjected to load tests.