Status of the ITER TBM Program and overview of its technical objectives

•ITER TBM Program plans to test 4 DEMO-relevant tritium breeding blanket systems.•There are two water-cooled and two helium-cooled Test Blanket Systems (TBS).•Each TBS is formed by various sub-systems with different functions and technologies.•The paper describes the on-going associated R&D and the main testing objectives. The ITER TBM Program foresees that two ITER equatorial ports are dedicated to the simultaneous operation and testing of mock-ups of four different concepts of tritium breeding blankets (TBB) ensuring tritium breeding self-sufficiency and extraction of high-grade heat for a demonstration fusion reactor (DEMO). The paper starts with the description of the four Test Blanket Systems (TBSs) for the initial configuration and the main on-going R&D carried out by the ITER Members (IMs) in support of the TBS designs. The second part addresses the main objectives of the ITER TBM program to be obtained during the testing campaigns in ITER in order to demonstrate the feasibility of the corresponding DEMO TBBs. It also addresses the main technological data/information that are expected to be obtained during the TBSs design and manufacturing phases and relevant for the DEMO breeding blanket designs.