Self-cooled PbLi blankets operate under strong magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) constraints, including pressure drop, structural loading, and material limits in high-field tokamak environments. The Toroidally Symmetric Lead-Lithium (TSLL) blanket concept reduces the dominant MHD pressure-drop penalty by geometric conditioning of the PbLi flow. This work explores a diagnostic interpretation of TSLL structural heterogeneity. In particular, the anchor-link array is examined as a possible set of geometrically fixed landmarks for wall-potential system identification. Because anchor links generate field-aligned MHD perturbations at known structural positions, their signatures may provide a spatial reference for interpreting local wall-potential measurements. Order-of-magnitude estimates indicate that TSLL-class wall-potential signals may lie in the 10⁻²–10⁰ V range, while anchor-link-induced perturbations may fall in the millivolt range. Weak local Lorentz excitation at 10³–10⁴ A/m² is also considered as a possible system-identification probe within the pressure-drop scale already associated with the anchor-link array. The central experimental question is whether anchor-link perturbations produce reactor-relevant signal-to-noise ratio and reproducible spatial correlation under realistic electromagnetic, thermal, and material conditions. The work frames anchor links not only as structural reinforcement elements, but also as potential diagnostic landmarks in geometry-conditioned liquid-metal blanket systems.
Daniel Luiz Scorzato Ribeiro (Fri,) studied this question.