APPLICATION OF SUPERMC3.2 TO PRELIMINARY NEUTRONICS ANALYSIS FOR EUROPEAN HCPB DEMO

¹ Key Laboratory of Neutronics and Radiation Safety, Institute of Nuclear Energy Safety Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, Anhui, 230031, China
² Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany

bin.li@fds.org.cn
bin.wu@fds.org.cn
guangyao.sun@fds.org.cn
lijuan.hao@fds.org.cn
jing.song@fds.org.cn
ulrich.fischer@kit.edu

Published online: 22 February 2021

Abstract

In the D-T fueled tokamak, the neutrons not only carry the approximately 80% energy released in the per fusion reaction, but also are the source of radioactivity in the fusion system. Therefore, high-fidelity neutronics simulation is required to support such reactor design and safety analysis. In the present work, taking European HCPB DEMO (Helium Cooled Pebble Bed demonstration fusion plant) developed by KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) as an example, the preliminary neutronics analysis covering the assessments of NWL (neutron wall loading), TBR (tritium breeding ratio), nuclear power generation, radiation loads on PFCs (plasma-facing components) and TFCs (toroidal field coils) has been carried out by using SuperMC in the case of both unbiased and biased simulations. The preliminary results indicate that the blanket scheme could satisfy the design requirements in terms of TBR and shielding of inboard blankets. Specially, a speed-up by ~164 times in the calculation for thick shielding region (TFC region) is achieved by using global weight windows generated via GWWG in SuperMC. In addition, compared to MCNP, SuperMC shows advantages in accurate and efficient modeling of complex system, efficient calculation and 3D interactive visualization.