Three-dimensional validation and analyses of the optimized CFETR HCCB blanket

Abstract

The Helium Cooled Ceramic Breeder (HCCB) blanket is the critical component of the China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR). The radial structural layout of the internal functional zones has the largest impact on the neutronics and thermal-hydraulic performance of the blanket, and it’s also the major determinant for the detailed 3D design. In the previous work, NTCOC, a Neutronics/Thermal-hydraulic Coupling Optimization Code, has been developed for application in the radial structural layout optimization of the CFETR HCCB blanket. However, for increasing the optimization efficiency, the NTCOC employs the simplified 1D neutronics and 2D thermal-hydraulic calculation models, the results of which may differ from the calculation results of the 3D actual models. Therefore, it’s essential to verify the reliability of the simplified models by comparing their calculation results with the corresponding 3D models. In this work, both the 3D neutronics and thermal-hydraulic analyses corresponding to the radial structural optimization processes of the CFETR HCCB blanket are performed and the corresponding calculation results are compared with NTCOC. The results show that adopting the 1D neutronics model in NTCOC can reflect the change tendency of the tritium breeding performance during the radial optimization processes accurately. However, the radial temperature distribution which is calculated by the 3D thermal-hydraulic model is generally higher than the NTCOC results, which means that the direct application of the 2D thermal-hydraulic model in NTCOC is not conservative. For solving this problem, a 3D thermal revision is added to the previous optimization method in the form of feedback. After revision, the 3D calculated temperature of the newly obtained blanket scheme is generally lower than the NTCOC’s, which means that the previous problem has been well solved. This work comprehensively verifies the reliability of the NTCOC and the improved optimization method after the 3D thermal revision for application in the radial structural optimization of the CFETR HCCB blanket.