MHD thermofluid issues of liquid-metal blankets: Phenomena and advances

The major accomplishments in the MHD thermofluid area over the last few years are reviewed for liquid-metal blankets. After summarizing basic liquid-metal blanket concepts, such as self-cooled blankets and in particular those to be tested in ITER, namely the dual-coolant and the helium-cooled lead-lithium blanket modules, weconsider the most important MHD phenomena and discuss their impactonheat and mass transfer during blanket operation with special emphasis placed on underlying flow physics. Among them are: MHD pressure drop, three-dimensional flows, MHD instability and turbulence, buoyancy-driven flows, electromagnetic coupling, and interfacial phenomena associated with hydrodynamic slip.