Speaker
Description
The DEMO (Demonstrator Power Plant) project is a magnetic-confinement demonstrator for a fusion power plant. Since the cryo-magnetic system is expected to represent a major cost, it must be carefully considered, particularly from the perspective of the superconducting material inventory and the associated cooling facility. In this paper, we explore the main cost factors of the cryo-magnetic Central Solenoid (CS) magnet system, inspired by the 2022 CEA design of the DEMO CS. We present a first attempt at optimizing a cryo-magnetic CS system by adjusting the operating temperature of the CS as a function of the superconducting material quantity, while maintaining a temperature margin of 1.5 K, defined with respect to the most demanding operating conditions and accounting for the variation of the current in the CS. The results show that reducing the amount of superconducting material can lead to a decrease in the overall cost of the whole cryo-magnetic system, despite an increase in the cost of the cryogenic system. The simulations are performed using Simcryogenics, combining 0D/1D representations of cryogenic components in the supercritical helium loop with 1D models of Cable-In-Conduit Conductors (CICCs) and associated piping.