Preliminary safety assessment on two LOCAs under ITER-like condition for the optimized CFETR helium cooled solid breeder blanket

Abstract

A conceptual design of helium cooled solid breeder (HCSB) blanket, one of three blanket candidates for Chinese Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR), has been performed recently. The transient analysis for different possible accidents should be carried out to assess its safety performance. In this paper, the ITER-like conditions are adopted since the associated system for CFETR is missing, such as helium cooling system, plasma shutdown condition, pump behavior, etc. The complete model is recreated including the optimized typical outboard HCSB blanket (NO.12) and its ancillary helium cooling loop, and accident analyses of two loss of coolant accident (LOCA) cases are investigated using RELAP5. The influences of different break areas under in-vessel LOCA are compared, and the accident consequence after small area break is chosen to be investigated. Regarding the ex-vessel LOCA, the influences of different break locations are thoroughly analyzed. Since the plasma cannot terminate passively after ex-vessel pipe break, the plasma termination behaviors are investigated with different shutdown time. The computational results show that with the safety criteria for ITER the HCSB blanket can be cooled down effectively by the helium cooling system (HCS) and the integrity of pressure barriers can be guaranteed for both accidents.