Blanket system selection for the ARIES-ST

The ARIES-ST (Spherical Tokamak) is to investigate the attractiveness of a low-aspect-device as the confinement concept for a fusion power plant. The key driven force of the ST design is caused by the center column conductor. The design selected is a water-cooled Cu normal conductor. This selection has a major impact on the blanket design and selection, tritium breeding an d over-all power balance. The blanket selected is a dual coolant concept, p artially decided by the characteristics of the center conductor. The final blanket design is modified from the dual coolant concept, which developed u nder the EC DEMO program. The reason for this selection and the design issu es are summarized in this paper. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.