Preliminary investigation on welding and cutting methods for first wall support leg in ITER blanket module

Mori, Kensuke; Suzuki, Satoshi; Enoeda, Mikio; Kakudate, Satoshi; Shibanuma, Kiyoshi; Akiba, Masato

A separable first wall from a shield block in ITER shield blanket module is required not only to be connected metallurgically to the shield block in order to withstand the electro-magnetic force and coolant pressure, but also to be able to replace the first wall more than 2 times in the hot cell during the life time of the reactor. Therefore, the consistent structure where remote handling equipment can be access to the joint and carry out the welding/cutting works perfectly to replace the first wall in the hot cell is required in the shield blanket design. This study shows an investigation of the blanket module design with a new type of the first wall support leg structure based on Disc-Cutter technology, which had been developed for the main pipe cutting in the maintenance phase and was selected out of a number of candidate methods, taking its large advantages into account, such as (1) a post-treatment can be eliminated in the hot cell because of no making material chips and of no need of lubricant, (2) the cut surface can be rewelded without any machining. In conclusion, not only the good performance of Disc-Cutter technology applied to the updated blanket module, but also consistent structure of the simplified shield blanket module including the first wall support leg in order to satisfy the requirements in the design have been proposed.