Ponente
Descripción
This neutronics computational work aims to provide neutronics arguments underpinning the effective use of neutrons generated in DONES. Neutrons are produced by the deuterium-lithium (d-Li) nuclear reactions caused by the bombardment of accelerated up to 40 MeV deuterons on the liquid lithium target inside the DONES Test Cell (TC). The resulting neutrons have a wide energy spectrum up to 55 MeV peaked at 14 MeV, which are impinged with a total neutron flux of 5e14 n/cm^2/s at the High Flux Test Module (HFTM) to irradiate the enclosed structural materials of the EU DEMO breeding blanket. For neutron multiplication and tritium breeding, the blanket uses functional materials. In this work, the functional materials are arranged at the location of the Medium Flux Test Module (MFTM), exposed by the total neutron flux of 8e13 n/cm^2/s. In the DONES project, the modules used for the irradiation of fusion functional materials are called Other Irradiation Modules (OIMs). This work is devoted to neutronics parameterization for the design of the BLUME - BLanket fUnctional Materials modulE. BLUME serves for testing, validation, and qualification of materials intended for the EU DEMO Helium-Cooled Pebble Bed (HCPB) breeding blanket. The HCPB design is based on the tritium fuel breeder pin concept. The Advanced Ceramic Breeder (ACB) pebbles are used for tritium breeding and titanium beryllide (TiBe12) for neutron multiplication. The ACB pebbles are composed of lithium orthosilicate and 35 mol% lithium meta titanate. The neutronics computations have been performed with the McDeLicious code and FENDL-3.1d neutron cross-sections library. Total (integrated by energy) neutron fluxes, neutron damage (dpa), and nuclear heating density (W/cc) have been analyzed for BLUME's structural and functional materials. Particularly, nuclear heating 3D mesh-tally distributions have been calculated in the following three materials: ACB, titanium beryllide, and Eurofer97. Tritium production has been assessed as 0.34 mg for one-day irradiation inside the one-pin BLUME-1 design as MFTM behind HFTM. The parametrization analysis presented in this work shows the possibility of increasing the total neutron flux at the front of BLUME-1 to 1.6e14 n/cm^2/s at the MFTM location if HFTM is removed from TC. Corresponding neutronics simulations of such HFTM-voiding effect indicated an increase of maximum values of nuclear heating densities at the front of BLUME-1 up to 8 times in TiBe12 and up to 3 times in ACB. The 3D heating density distributions have been used as input data for thermohydraulic and structural analyses with the ANSYS code. The results indicated that nuclear heating leads to the ACB temperature between 408-509 degrees Celsius, suitable for effective tritium extraction.
