Speaker
Fabrizio Franza
(Institute for Neutron Physics and Reactor Technology)
Description
A fusion power plant is characterized by many subsystems operating under extreme thermal and nuclear conditions, thus compelling to be designed according to physics and engineering constraints. For such an operation, dedicated tools called systems codes are currently used. At Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), a dedicated modelling campaign has been recently launched aiming to study the technology aspects of the key reactor’s components, such as breeding blanket and magnets system.
Mostly due to computing time constraints, modern systems codes are based on rather simplified mathematical models. The idea behind these activities is to enhance, compared to existing systems codes, the level of details for the implemented models, for instance in terms of geometrical characterization and modelling sophistication of the simulated reactor’s elements. This approach is expected to catch more accurately some of the key issues affecting the power plant design, though avoiding massive and time consuming full scale simulations. The main reactor parameters can be consequently determined based on more consistent calculations rather than on given assumptions.
In the frame of this project different advanced models were developed to cover the major fusion technology areas, such as neutronics for the breeding blanket, electromagnetics and structural mechanics for toroidal and poloidal field coils and thermal-hydraulics for the balance of plant. Moreover, in order to prove the plant design so obtained from the physics standpoint, two important physics submodules were added and adapted to the project: the TREND and the TOKES codes, developed at Max-Planck-Institute for Plasma Physics Garching and KIT respectively.
In this study the applied methodology is briefly described and the numerical results related to some improved reactor designs (e.g. based on current DEMO proposal) are reported and discussed. The main goal is to show the impact of accuracy and assumptions of the implemented models on main reactor’s parameters.
Co-authors
Fabrizio Franza
(Institute for Neutron Physics and Reactor Technology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany)
Hartmut Zohm
(Max-Planck-Institute of Plasma Physics, Boltzmannstraße 2, 85748 Garching, Germany)
Igor Landman
(Institute for Neutron Physics and Reactor Technology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany)
Lorenzo Virgilio Boccaccini
(Institute for Neutron Physics and Reactor Technology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany)
Pattabhi Vishnuvardhan Gade
(Institute for Technical Physics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany)
Sergey Pestchanyi
(Institute for Neutron Physics and Reactor Technology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany)
