[Table of Contents]

Plasma and Fusion Research

Volume 9, 3405140 (2014)

Regular Articles

Improvement of Evaluation of Replacement Cost of a Fusion Power Plant
Takuya GOTO, Hiroyasu UTOH1), Youji SOMEYA1), Makoto NAKAMURA1), Ryoji HIWATARI2) and Kenji TOBITA1)
National Institute for Fusion Science, 322-6 Oroshi-cho, Toki 509-5292, Japan
1)
Japan Atomic Energy Agency, 2-168 Oaza-Obuchi-Aza-Omotedate, Rokkasho 039-3212, Japan
2)
Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry, 2-11-1 Iwado-kita, Komae 201-8511, Japan
(Received 10 December 2013 / Accepted 24 July 2014 / Published 31 October 2014)

Abstract

A new model to evaluate the plant availability of a fusion reactor by considering the required cooling time before starting the scheduled replacement of in-vessel components was developed and incorporated in the tokamak system design code TPC-SCONE. Plant availability strongly depends on the electric output and decreases with increasing electric output. The plant availability does not much improve by advances in the physics or engineering design conditions. Consequently, the effect of the increase in the electric output on reducing the cost of electricity is diminished. Thus, proper selection of the electric output of a fusion reactor (especially for a DEMO reactor) is likely required to achieve the plant availability target.

Keywords

reactor design, system design code, cost model, plant availability, time required for replacement

DOI: 10.1585/pfr.9.3405140

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References

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This paper may be cited as follows:

Takuya GOTO, Hiroyasu UTOH, Youji SOMEYA, Makoto NAKAMURA, Ryoji HIWATARI and Kenji TOBITA, Plasma Fusion Res. 9, 3405140 (2014).