Published date: 7 October 2019

Closed opportunity - This means that the contract is currently closed. The buying department may be considering suppliers that have already applied, or no suitable offers were made.


Closing: 4 November 2019

Contract summary

Industry

  • Radioactive materials - 09343000

  • Research, testing and scientific technical simulator - 38970000

  • Heat-exchange units - 42511100

    • Feasibility study, advisory service, analysis - 71241000

    • Mechanical engineering services - 71333000

    • Engineering studies - 71335000

    • Engineering support services - 71336000

    • Corrosion engineering services - 71337000

    • Technical assistance services - 71356200

    • Experimental development services - 73120000

    • Development consultancy services - 73220000

    • Design and execution of research and development - 73300000

Location of contract

South East

Value of contract

£0 to £120,000

Procurement reference

20191007120126-72814

Published date

7 October 2019

Closing date

4 November 2019

Contract start date

15 November 2019

Contract end date

27 March 2020

Contract type

Service contract

Procedure type

Open procedure

Any interested supplier may submit a tender in response to an opportunity notice.

Contract is suitable for SMEs?

Yes

Contract is suitable for VCSEs?

No

Description

Managing the heat exhaust from a fusion reactor is one of the most pressing challenges facing those seeking to realise a commercial power plant design

For spherical tokamak designs such as STEP, the compact nature of the device potentially increases the heat fluxes on the plasma-facing components and restricts the space for incorporating cooling when compared to conventional larger aspect-ratio tokamaks such as ITER or EU-DEMO.

A fusion reactor heat exhaust is handled via a divertor, which needs to handle large heat fluxes (>10 MW.m-2) especially in the divertor target

2Heat pipes have been proposed as potential technology for fusion high heat flux components since at least 1972. Liquid metal filled heat pipes have been tested under fusion relevant heat fluxes as recently as 2018. Despite this, there remain significant outstanding questions before they can be considered as a feasible solution for the fusion heat exhaust problem

The STEP Work Package 5 (Resilient Nuclear Components) wishes to harness industrial expertise in heat pipe design outside the fusion community and to identify whether this expertise can be applied to developing an innovative heat pipe concept design for the STEP divertor target.

This design challenge is ultimately concerned with the feasibility of implementation for a heat pipe high heat flux handling solution within the divertor region of a fusion reactor.

The UKAEA is seeking the assessment of innovative preliminary concept designs of a high heat flux heat pipe suitable for use as a STEP divertor target.

The total duration of the activities of this initial contract shall not exceed 12 weeks and must be completed by March 2020.

More information

Links

About the buyer

Contact name

Vincent Tsang

Address

Culham Science Centre
Abingdon
OX14 3DB
ENG

Telephone

+44 1235466444

Email

vincent.tsang@ukaea.uk

Website

www.gov.uk/government/organisations/uk-atomic-energy-authority