STEP WP5 - Fusion Power Plant - Diverter Heat Exchanger Design Challenge

Manging the heat exhaust from a fusion reactor is one of the most pressing challenges facing those seeking to realise a commercial power plant design.

A fusion reactor heat exhaust is handled via a divertor, which needs to handle large heat fluxes (>10 MWm-2) especially in the divertor target.

For spherical tokamak designs such as STEP, the compact nature of the device potentially increases the heat fluxes on the plasma-facing components, such as the divertor target, and restricts the space for incorporating cooling when compared to conventional larger aspect-ratio tokamaks such as ITER or EU-DEMO.

Parallels can be drawn between the heat management challenges faced in the fusion community and those faced outside the fusion community, particularly in sectors such as motorsport, aerospace, power electronics, and renewable energy where high performance heat exchangers are utilized.

The STEP Work Package 5 (Resilient Nuclear Components) wishes to harness industrial expertise in heat exchanger design outside the fusion community and to identify whether this expertise can be applied to developing an innovative heat exchanger concept design for the STEP divertor target.