R&D Project

TANIGAWA Hiroyasu PM Photo

Goal 10 R&D Projects (Selected in FY2025)Development of Autonomous Breeding Blanket for Compact Fusion Reactors

Project manager (PM)TANIGAWA HiroyasuDeputy Director, Department of Blanket Systems Research, Rokkasho Institute for Fusion Energy, National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology

Summary of the project

The fuel-breeding blanket of a fusion reactor serves three essential functions: neutron shielding, energy conversion and recovery and fuel production.
This project aims to resolve the risk that conventional breeding blanket designs cannot secure sufficient plasma volume to achieve adequate fusion power output when reactor compactness is realized.

  • We aim to realize a groundbreaking breeding blanket that can achieve fusion power and stability sufficient for commercial operation even in an ITER-scale reactor, along with the potential to innovatively reduce the overall tritium inventory of the entire plant.
  • We are advancing the development of an advanced blanket (patent-pending idea - undisclosed) where thermal and neutron loading on the plasma-facing surface increases autonomously enhances heat removal performance and fuel breeding capability.
  • With its high versatility, we will establish this blanket design as the global standard, thereby accelerating the worldwide societal deployment of deuterium–tritium (DT) fusion.
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Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. Compact fusion‑reactor design enabled by the advanced blanket

Milestone by 2034

Verification will be achieved by testing in simulated reactor environments to demonstrate that the technical challenges associated with the autonomous breeding blanket can be overcome, even under the in-vessel conditions of a DT fusion reactor.

Milestone by 2029

We aim to establish a clear prospect for the core elemental technologies essential to enabling the autonomous breeding blanket.

Performers

Theme [1-1] SOMAYA Yoji National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology
Theme [1-2][3-5][4-6] SODEKODA Tatsuya IHI Corporation
Theme [2-1][4-5] NOZAWA Takashi National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology
Theme [2-2][5-2] TANIGAWA Hiroyasu National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology
Theme [3-1][3-4] EBARA Shinji The University of Tokyo
Theme [3-2] YUKI Kazuhisa Yamaguchi Tokyo University of Science
Theme [3-3] YOKOMINE Takehiko Kyoto University
Theme [4-1] YOSHIDA Yusuke Toyota Industries Corporation
Theme [4-2] HINOKI Tatsuya Kyoto University
Theme [4-3] KONDO Sosuke Tohoku University
Theme [4-4] SERIZAWA Hisashi The University of Osaka
Theme [5-1] WATANABE Makoto National Institute for Materials Science
Theme [6-1] CHIKADA Takumi Shizuoka University
Theme [7-1] YAGI Juro Kyoto University
Theme [7-2] NAKAJIMA Motoki National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology
Theme [8-1] KATAYAMA Kazunari Kyushu University
Theme [8-2] OYA Yasuhisa Shizuoka University
Theme [9-1] YUSA Noritaka Tohoku University

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