Study on containment safety systems for Korean fusion DEMO plant

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to review the strategy for radiation barriers in the fusion power plants and to produce simulation data for the conceptual design of safety features to maintain the integrity of such barriers as a part of R&D program through the National Fusion Research Institute of Korea. Even though the amount of radioactive source term in fusion power plants should be much less than that of fission power plants, internal as well as external events can result in damage to facilities such that public can be critically exposed by radiation. In the first part of this study, we reviewed and compared the multiple defenses to protect radioactive hazard in fission and fusion power plants. Containment was characterized as an indispensable physical barrier and the integrity of containment particularly enveloping a fuel cycle which is a major radioactive source term, tritium, should be secured. Since water is assumed as one of the coolant options in the Korean fusion DEMO plant, the thermo-hydraulic analysis was carried out using computer simulations to produce key parameters related with the integrity of containment in the second part. The performance of both of active and passive safety features to control the key parameters was compared to take recent fission technologies into account.