Speaker
Tim Eade
(Culham Centre for Fusion Energy)
Description
Demonstrating tritium self-sufficiency is an important goal of the European tokamak DEMOnstration reactor developed within the Power Plant Physics and Technology (PPPT) EUROfusion programme. Currently four breeder blanket concepts are being considered; the Helium Cooled Pebble Bed (HCPB), Helium Cooled Lithium-Lead (HCLL), Dual Cooled Lithium-Lead (DCLL) and Water Cooled Lithium-Lead (WCLL).
The differences in materials and construction of the four breeder blanket concepts leads to differing nuclear responses under neutron irradiation. This is of particular importance in safety analyses, such as the modelling of loss of coolant accidents, as it affects the blanket’s decay heat and nuclide inventory.
This paper presents and discusses analysis performed for each of the blanket concepts to ascertain the decay heat and nuclide inventory for both the entire reactor and individual blanket modules. It was found that the total decay heat at short decay times for the HCLL concept (17.5 MW at 1s) was between 17-22% lower than the HCPB, WCLL and DCLL At longer decay times (~100 years) it was found that the DCLL and WCLL blankets had decay heats in the region of 2-3 orders of magnitude above the HCPB and HCLL blankets.
Although the majority of the dominant active nuclides in the tungsten (187187W and 185185W) and Eurofer (structural steel) (5555Fe and 5151Cr) were similar between the blanket concepts some differences were noted. For example, longer decay times 121121Sn was one of the dominant nuclides for Eurofer in the HCPB concept; however does not appear in the top ten dominant nuclides for the HCLL concept. The differences in dominant nuclides are discussed in the context of neutron spectra and material compositions.
Co-authors
Anton Travleev
(Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Postfach 3640, 76021 Karlsruhe, Germany, Germany)
Francisco Ogando
(Departamento de Ingenieria Energetica, UNED, 28040 Madrid, Spain)
Gediminas Stankunas
(Lithuanian Energy Institute, Laboratory of Nuclear Installation Safety, Breslaujos str, LT-44403 Kaunas, Lithuania)
Javier Sanz
(Departamento de Ingenieria Energetica, UNED, 28040 Madrid, Spain)
Mauricio Garcia
(Departamento de Ingenieria Energetica, UNED, 28040 Madrid, Spain)
Pavel Pereslavtsev
(Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Postfach 3640, 76021 Karlsruhe, Germany, Germany)
Raquel Garcia
(Departamento de Ingenieria Energetica, UNED, 28040 Madrid, Spain)
Tim Eade
(Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, Culham Science Centre, Abingdon, United Kingdom)
