What is the DEMO Design Activity?
Japan and the EU both conduct design activities aimed at the construction of a fusion power reactor in their domestic fusion programmes. DEMO, a demonstration prototype, is the first step in that direction after ITER. The concepts and requirements for the EU DEMO and the JA DEMO are not the same.
Under the Broader Approach DDA activities, EU and Japan have fruitful discussions on the concepts, with the aim of establishing a common basis for DEMO design, by exchanging scientific and technical information and performing some joint conceptual design activities.
What is the DEMO R&D Activity?
In parallel to the DEMO Design activities, materials and technologies have to be developed, tested and qualified to be used in future fusion reactors. A first step is to find materials sufficiently reliable to build DEMO, and to develop the technologies that will not be fully tested in ITER, such as Tritium fuel production and recovery. Under BA DEMO R&D activities, JA and EU share the results of the DEMO R&D in materials and technologies, agree on complementary experiments, cross-check each other’s results, and build common databases and engineering handbooks for the future construction of DEMO and fusion reactors
Below, the film shows an experiment in the top materials research laboratory available at the IFERC site. The footage shows the “combustion method” newly developed to analyse small amounts of dust (a few milligrams). The dust was recovered from the interior of the JET tokamak after operating for extended periods with different plasma facing materials. The results are of great interest both for ITER operation, and for the design of DEMO.