Conceptual design of the international fusion materials irradiation facility (IFMIF)

The International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility (IFMIF) conceptual design is complete. The two-year effort was carried out as an activity of t he IEA Executive Committee on Fusion Materials. Specialists from Europe, Ja pan, the United States and the Russian Federation came together in a series of meetings and workshops to define the concepts for the technical systems and the overall design and cost estimate. The goal of the IFMIF is to prov ide an irradiation facility for use by fusion material scientists in the se arch for low activation and damage resistant materials, An accelerator-base d neutron source has been established through a number of international stu dies and workshops as an essential step for near-term materials development and testing. IFMIF would also provide calibration and validation of data f rom fission reactor and other accelerator-based irradiation testing. The de sign concept consists of a deuteron accelerator producing particle energies in the range of 30-40 MeV. The deuterons interact with a flowing liquid li thium target (D-LI) producing high energy neutrons with a peaked flux aroun d 14 MeV. The resulting high energy neutrons will interact with a test asse mbly to irradiate test samples of candidate materials up to full lifetime o f anticipated use in future fusion energy reactors. (C) 1998 Published by E lsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.