The Direct Internal Recycling concept to simplify the fuel cycle of a fusion power plant

• The fusion fuel cycle is presented and its functions are discussed.
• Tritium inventories are estimated for an early DEMO configuration.
• The Direct Internal Recycling concept to reduce tritium inventories is described.
• Concepts for its technical implementation are developed.

A new concept, the Direct Internal Recycling (DIR) concept, is proposed, which minimizes fuel cycle inventory by adding an additional short-cut between the pumped torus exhaust gas and the fuelling systems. The paper highlights quantitative modelling results derived from a simple fuel cycle spreadsheet which underline the potential benefits that can be achieved by implementation of the DIR concept into a fusion power plant.DIR requires a novel set-up of the torus exhaust pumping system, which replaces the batch-wise and cyclic operated cryogenic pumps by a continuous pumping solution and which offers at the same time an additional integral gas separation function. By that, hydrogen can be removed close to the divertor from all other gases and the main load to the fuel clean-up systems is a smaller, helium-rich gas stream. Candidate DIR relevant pump technology based on liquid metals (vapour diffusion and liquid ring pumps) and metal foils is discussed.