Safety Analyses for CANDOR, an Advanced-Fuel Fusion Device

In a Deuterium-Tritium fusion reactor, nearly 20% of the thermal power has to be transferred from the hot plasma through the wall components of the burn chamber. Design requirements of commercial fusion power plant in-vessel components are potentially even more stringent than those of experimental devices. Fusion nuclear reactor studies are currently devoted mostly to the Deuterium-Tritium (DT) fuel cycle, since it is the easiest way to reach ignition or a high energy gain. However, reducing the activation of materials is one of the biggest concerns for fusion power: the study of advanced fuel fusion devices, such as the CANDOR Deuterium-Helium-3 (DHe3) tokamak, is proposed for this purpose. The plasma confinement requirements for a DHe3 reactor are much more challenging than those for a DT reactor. Thus, the demands on the divertor and the first wall are more severe, particularly during a disruption. Safety analyses, starting from heat load determinations, have been performed for CANDOR, a proposed DHe3 experiment, starting from similar evaluations carried out for the ARIES III DHe3 reactor.