Seminar: On the way towards a fusion power plant – achievements and challenges, with a special view on plasma-facing materials

Fusion is the only primary energy source which is currently not exploited by mankind. Its realization as an electricity source promises resources for very long time scales, a safe operation without CO2 emissions and limited waste with no long-term repository needs.

Recently, fusion has drawn a lot of attention due to demonstration at the two largest installations worldwide, both in the field of inertial confinement fusion (at the National Ignition Facility at Livermore, USA), and at the Joint European Torus, operated at Culham (UK) by the European fusion research consortium EUROfusion and its partners.

In this talk, an introduction to both fusion concepts and the record experiments will be provided. A perspective towards a fusion reactor will be outlined. In the second half of the talk, current research topics of materials research for the plasma-facing components will be presented, addressing the challenges of materials in an extreme environment. In particular, tungsten-based composites and self-passivating alloys and their concepts will be discussed and put in perspective towards a fusion reactor.