A Two-Way Neutronics/Thermal-Hydraulics Coupling Analysis Method for Fusion Blankets and Its Application to CFETR

Tao Dai,Qingming He,Wei Shen,Liangzhi Cao,Hongchun Wu

doi:10.3390/en13164070

Abstract

The China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR) is a tokamak device to validate and demonstrate fusion engineering technology. In CFETR, the breeding blanket is a vital important component that is closely related to the performance and safety of the fusion reactor. Neutronics/thermal-hydraulics (N/TH) coupling effect is significant in the numerical analysis of the fission reactor. However, in the numerical analysis of the fusion reactor, the existing coupling code system mostly adopts the one-way coupling method. The ignorance of the two-way N/TH coupling effect would lead to inaccurate results. In this paper, the MCNP/FLUENT code system is developed based on the 3D-1D-2D hybrid coupling method. The one-way and two-way N/TH coupling calculations for two typical blanket concepts, the helium-cooled solid breeder (HCSB) blanket and the water-cooled ceramic breeder (WCCB) blanket, are carried out to study the two-way N/TH coupling effect in CFETR. The numerical results show that, compared with the results from the one-way N/TH coupling calculation, the tritium breeding ration (TBR) calculated with the two-way N/TH calculation decreases by −0.11% and increases by 4.45% for the HCSB and WCCB blankets, respectively. The maximum temperature increases by 1 °C and 29 °C for the HCSB and WCCB blankets, respectively.

Highlights

In order to validate the science feasibility and demonstrate the engineering technology of the magnetic-confinement fusion reactor, and achieve the transition from experimental device to demonstration reactor (DEMO), the China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR) was proposed by the China National Integration Design Group [1]
N/TH calculation decreases by −0.11% and increases by 4.45% for the helium-cooled solid breeder (HCSB) and water-cooled ceramic breeder (WCCB) blankets, respectively
Reactor (ITER) project [26], neutronics code MCNP and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code CFX/FLUENT are appointed as the official design tools

Summary

Introduction

In order to validate the science feasibility and demonstrate the engineering technology of the magnetic-confinement fusion reactor, and achieve the transition from experimental device to demonstration reactor (DEMO), the China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR) was proposed by the China National Integration Design Group [1]. To achieve the design goal of tritium breeding, energy extraction, and radiation shielding, the blanket design is significant to the performance and the safety of the CFETR. The most relevant fields include neutronics and thermal-hydraulics [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14], which will directly influence the operation of the fusion reactor. Blanket design works were performed independently without considering the coupling effects among different fields. With the advances of the blanket design, the demand for high-precision numerical analysis of the blanket is growing and the integrated approach to the blanket design is getting more attractions. Utoh [15] developed a 2D nuclear/thermal coupling analysis code DOHEAT

Methods

Results

Conclusion