The EU-DEMO must demonstrate the possibility of generating electricity through nuclear fusion reactions. Moreover, it must denote the necessary technologies to control a powerful plasma with adequate availability and to meet the safety requirements for plant licensing. However, the extensive radioactive materials inventory, the complexity of the plant, and the presence of massive energy sources require a rigorous safety approach to fully realize fusion power’s environmental advantages. The Tokamak building barrier design must address two main issues: radioactive mass transport hazards and energy-related or pressure/vacuum hazards. Safety studies are performed in the frame of the EUROfusion Safety And Environment (SAE) work package to support design improvement and evaluate the thermal-hydraulic behavior of confinement building environments during accident conditions in addition to source term mobilization. This paper focuses on developing a thermal-hydraulic model of the EU-DEMO Tokamak building. A preliminary model of the heat ventilation and air conditioning system and vent detritiation system is developed. A loss-of-coolant accident is studied by investigating the Tokamak building pressurization, source term mobilization, and release. Different nodalizations were compared, highlighting their effects on source term estimation. Results suggest that the building design should be improved to maintain the pressure below safety limits; some mitigative systems are preliminarily investigated for this purpose.
In the broad framework of the nuclear power plants industry, the dynamic probabilistic risk assessment could answer the time dependence deficiency of the event tree and fault tree analysis. The basic event tree approach relies on experts' pre-constructed accident sequences without exploring the time-dependent nature of an accident scenario, which could strongly affect the accident sequence. Conversely, effects of events timing can be studied adopting a Dynamic Event Tree (DET) approach. Developing a DET methodology requires integrating a system code capable of replicating an accident scenario and a logic-driver code able to generate the event tree sequence, trigger plant safety systems, and manage other relevant events throughout the simulation. For this purpose, MELCOR and RAVEN have been coupled through a Python script developed by the Sapienza University of Rome to perform dynamic event tree studies during accident transients in fusion and fission reactors. RAVEN is a software tool developed at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to act as a control logic driver and post-processing tool for different applications. MELCOR for fusion is a fully integrated design basis and severe accident code that simulates thermal-hydraulic behavior and self-consistently accounting for aerosol transport in nuclear facilities and reactor cooling systems for the evaluation of the source term in fusion reactors. The coupling between these codes will provide a wide range of NPP risk assessment analyses, establishing new best practices. In this work, a preliminary dynamic event tree study has been performed, selecting as initiating event an ex-vessel LOCA in the WCLL Test Blanket System to be tested in ITER. Time-dependent parameters such as the intervention of the plasma shutdown system and the closure of the main system isolation valves have been sampled to study evolving system scenarios.
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