CURRENT R&D ACTIVITIES ON KOREAN HELIUM COOLED SOLID BREEDER TEST BLANKET MODULE

Helium Cooled Solid Breeder (HCSB) blanket is one of two blanket concepts being considered as Korean Test Blanket Module (TBM) for ITER with the aim for testing and verifying the capability of the breeding blanket concepts. R&D activities being carrying out for HCSB TBM include the development of materials, fabrication technologies, and TBM associated system design. A small sample of ferritic/martensitic (FM) steel was fabricated. It was found that the tensile strength was close to previous value. A fabrication technique of sphere pebbles of lithium titanate breeder and graphite reflector was developed. A FM/FM TIG welding was performed and the results showed that tensile strength of the welded zone was decreased about 10%. A small punch test method of mechanical property evaluation was introduced to verify the suitability of small specimen for irradiation test by examining the relationship of the conventional uniaxial tensile test, and the tensile strengths were compared. As TBM design has complicated square channel configuration, short square channel was fabricated successfully. Finally, the components and specifications of the TBM associated systems are described in this paper.