New Blaster: solo, survivablity and damage ?

Hi there Blaster community!
Well I'm not only new to blasters but also kinda new to this game but so far it's awesome! Today I was clumsily alt-ing around and happened to roll a fire/fire blaster. By the end of the tutorial I was in *LOVE*!! I was looking for things to kill that weren't even on my missions because I was enjoying it so much.

I got to reading around on the forum and noticed that the consensus seems to be that Fire/Fire is lacking some survivability which I have certainly noticed. So I was wondering if any of you wonderfully helpful people would have any recommendations for a set up that is similar to fire/fire with more defensive protection and survivability, but still with the fun lunatic dmg? This character will be a mostly solo, PVE-only character
I'm lookin at these so far any help, or suggestions would be great.

Fire/Energy Manipulation
Fire/Elec
Fire/MM
Elec/Elec
Radiation/(not really sure about secondary here but radiation looks super fun)
*If anyone has any ideas about staying with fire/fire I'd love to hear it, it's just that this char will be solo-ing and I'm probably just playing badly, but it seems lower on the staying alive end of the stick
Thank you all very much in advance . Sorry this is a lot of text I'm nervous about posting

Fire / Mental has at least as much AoE damage as Fire / Fire and is safer. You have two cones plus Fire Ball, as well as Drain Psyche and Psychic Shockwave. About the only thing you lose is the damage aura, but a Blaster can't really stay in melee long enough to get much use from that without a real oddball build.

Fire / Ice is also nice... you gain a lot of mitigation at the cost of a bit of AoE. On the other hand, you can slow things down so much that Rain of Fire might actually become worthwhile.

Fire / Electric isn't going to have much mitigation, but you get pretty much the highest damage possible since /Electric has massive single target melee and Fire has huge AoE and ST damage. A Fire / Elec / Cold Blaster built for high Smash / Lethal defense is pretty much the ultimate damage machine: Fire Breath + Fireball to start, then Charged Brawl, Havoc Punch, Shocking Grasp, and Blaze to finish things off. Fair warning though, that's a seriously expensive build.

Fire / Energy is similar to Fire / Electric but with slightly less melee damage. On the other hand, it has Boost Range, which is handy if you want a pure ranged build since it makes Fire Breath and Blaze easier to use.

I haven't tried Radiation Blast but I can tell you it's not going to have the damage of Fire, simply because nothing does. It does look cool, but it's a bit light on AoE damage. Rad / Mental might be decent, or Rad / Energy if you want a long range single target blaster. Out of the sets you listed, I'd go with Fire / Mental myself... it's not the safest but the damage is fantastic and it has some mitigation, unlike Fire / Fire.

Okay thanks guys! Looks like I'm gonna make a go of Fire/Mental. I rolled an Elec/Elec a little bit ago and so far it's meh, I don't love it I don't hate it. I actually am liking the primary Elec powers, but for now I'm going with Fire/Mental it looks great thanks for help! I'm excited to be an AoE monster

Ice blast is also worth a look, for soloing. Between the slows and holds, and good single target damage, you'll solo very well with ice blast.

Fire / ice is also very good for balancing damage and survivability, as another poster pointed out.