Evaluation of the impact of plasma operation scenarios on the fusion reactor blanket design using an integrated numerical plasma and neutronics analysis suite

Abstract

A very limited operation scenario has been used for fusion neutronics for the design of tritium breeding blankets. However, many advanced operation scenarios are under development and the impact of choosing a plasma operation scenario for fusion neutronics, which requires integration of neutronics analysis with plasma analysis, needs to be evaluated. An automated process from plasma analysis to neutronics analysis to create a viable fusion plasma neutron source was considered using a few different codes. In this work, we develop an integrated suite combining plasma modeling codes and neutronics codes. McCARD, a Monte-Carlo neutron-photon transport simulation code, is integrated into TRIASSIC, a tokamak reactor integrated automation suite for simulation and calculation, as the module for neutronics analysis of various plasma operation scenarios. McCARD integration allows TRIASSIC to perform neutronics analysis along with analytical and predictive plasma simulations. To evaluate this integrated suite, KSTAR experimental data were used to calculate the neutron flux at the first wall via TRIASSIC with the McCARD module in three different cases. First, the effect of plasma shape parameters, elongation and triangularity, on neutron flux is analyzed. Second, plasma scenario with the changes to the shape and the performance of plasma over time is studied to evaluate the time varying simulation. Third, two different plasma scenarios are compared to analyze the impact of plasma performance on neutron flux.