HTSMART

Call for Transmissions 2024 – HTSMART PLEC2024-011228

• PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

Nuclear fusion, the energy source of stars, is currently humanity’s hope for meeting its energy needs in the future. Clean and virtually inexhaustible, nuclear fusion is presented as one of the few viable and environmentally sustainable solutions. Currently, the most promising route to a fusion reactor is based on the use of toroidal magnetic fields that confine the plasma in a magnetic cage, levitating in a vacuum and minimizing its contact with the reactor walls. The most advanced magnetic topology for confining fusion plasma is implemented in tokamak reactors.

HTSMART will design an ultra-compact, high-magnetic-field fusion reactor with self-sufficient tritium production, based on negative triangularity spherical tokamaks and HTS coils. In addition, the first HTS coil in an operational tokamak will be designed, prototyped, and validated. The HTS coils with integrated cryogenics will be manufactured using direct laser deposition metal additive manufacturing technology. The project will investigate real-time structural health monitoring of the HTS coil structure, using sensors integrated into the additively manufactured metal structure, to protect the fusion reactor.

• OBJECTIVES: design of the most compact and efficient magnetic confinement fusion reactor possible, with self-sufficient tritium production, based on negative triangularity spherical tokamaks and HTS coils.
• DURATION: 01/01/2025-31/12/2028