Vacuum hot-pressed beryllium and TiC dispersion strengthened tungsten alloy developments for ITER and future fusion reactors

Beryllium and tungsten have been selected as the plasma facing materials of the ITER first wall (FW) and divertor chamber, respectively. China, as a participant in ITER, will share the manufacturing tasks of ITER first-wall mockups with the European Union and Russia. Therefore ITER-grade beryllium has been developed in China and a kind of vacuum hot-pressed (VHP) beryllium, CN-G01, was characterized for both physical, and thermo-mechanical properties and high heat flux performance, which indicated an equivalent performance to U.S. grade S-65C beryllium, a reference grade beryllium of ITER. Consequently CN-G01 beryllium has been accepted as the armor material of ITER-FW blankets. In addition, a modification of tungsten by TiC dispersion strengthening was investigated and a W–TiC alloy with TiC content of 0.1 wt.% has been developed. Both surface hardness and recrystallization measurements indicate its re-crystallization temperature approximately at 1773 K. Deuterium retention and thermal desorption behaviors of pure tungsten and the TiC alloy were also measured by deuterium ion irradiation of 1.7 keV energy to the fluence of 0.5–5 × 1018 D/cm2; a main desorption peak at around 573 K was found and no significant difference was observed between pure tungsten and the tungsten alloy. Further characterization of the tungsten alloy is in progress.