ABSTRACT
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which began construction in 2007, will demonstrate the physical and technological feasibility of fusion for power production [1]. It will employ tungsten at areas with high particle and power load (divertor entrance and baffles) owing to its highenergy threshold for sputtering and its low sputtering yield compared to the low-Z materials such as C and Be, which will be used in parallel. Although the requirements for the plasma-facing components (PFCs) in ITER will already be higher than in the present-day devices, the step to a quasisteady-state DEMO reactor will still considerably increase the particle fluencies to the PFCs. Therefore, it is foreseen that tungsten will be used as an armor material for all PFCs [2] in future fusion reactors.
