Neutronic calculations of the China dual-functional lithium–lead test blanket module with the parallel discrete ordinates code Hydra

Abstract

The China dual-functional lithium–lead test blanket module (DFLL-TBM) is a liquid LiPb blanket concept developed by the Institute of Nuclear Energy Safety Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for testing in ITER to validate relevant tritium breeding and shielding technologies. In this study, neutronic calculations of DFLL-TBM were carried out using a massively parallel three-dimensional transport code, Hydra, with the Fusion Evaluated Nuclear Data Library/MG. Hydra was developed by the Nuclear Engineering Computational Physics Lab based on the discrete ordinates method and has been devoted to neutronic analysis and shielding evaluation for nuclear facilities. An in-house Monte Carlo code (MCX) was employed to verify the discretized calculation model used by Hydra for the DFLL-TBM calculations. The results showed two key aspects: (1) In most material zones, Hydra solutions are in good agreement with the reference MCX results within 1%, and the maximal relative difference of the neutron flux is merely 3%, demonstrating the correctness of the calculation model; (2) while the current DFLL-TBM design meets the operation shielding requirement of ITER for 4 years, it does not satisfy the tritium self-sufficiency requirement. Compared to the two-step approach, Hydra produces higher accuracies as it does not rely on the homogenization technique during the calculation process. The parallel efficiency tests of Hydra using the DFLL-TBM model also showed that this code maintains a high parallel efficiency on O(100) processors and, as a result, is able to significantly improve computing performance through parallelization. Parameter studies have been carried out by varying the thickness of the beryllium armor layer and the tritium breeding zone to understand the influence of the beryllium layer and breeding zone thickness on tritium breeding performance. This establishes a foundation for further improvement in the tritium production performance of DFLL-TBM.