Neutronics R&D efforts in support of the European breeder blanket development programme

Abstract

The recent progress in the R&D neutronics efforts spent in the EU to support the development of the HCLL and HCPB breeder blankets is presented. These efforts include neutronic design activities performed in the framework of the European DEMO reactor study, validation efforts by means of neutronics mock-up experiments using 14 MeV neutron generators and the development of dedicated computational tools such as the conversion software McCad for the automatic generation of a Monte Carlo geometry model from available CAD data, and the MCSEN code for Monte Carlo based calculations of sensitivities and uncertainties by using the track length estimator. The supporting validation effort is devoted to the capability of the neutronics tools and data to predict the tritium production and other nuclear responses of interest in neutronics mock-up experiments. Such an experiment has been conducted on a HCPB mock-up while another on a HCLL mock-up is in progress.