Lessons learnt from ITER safety &amp; licensing for DEMO and future nuclear fusion facilities

Taylor, Neill; Cortes, Pierre

doi:10.1016/j.fusengdes.2013.12.030

Cited by 59 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…The main differences between ITER and DEMO are summarized in Table 1 [7]. A variety of fusion power plant system designs have been studied in the past across the world, but the underlying physics and technology assumptions were found to be at an early stage of readiness.…”

Section: Main Differences Between Iter and Demomentioning

confidence: 99%

Overview of EU DEMO design and R&D activities

Federici¹,

Kemp²,

Ward³

et al. 2014

Fusion Engineering and Design

291

192

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Section: Main Differences Between Iter and Demomentioning

confidence: 99%

Overview of EU DEMO design and R&D activities

Federici¹,

Kemp²,

Ward³

et al. 2014

Fusion Engineering and Design

291

192

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“…Even though a fusion reactor is inherently safe, it is a nuclear device and everything possible should be done to protect the workers and the people living in the environment from any risk. To obtain the license to operate it must be demonstrated to the regulator that all aspects of the reactor are safe and that there are no hidden pitfalls [30]. Given the present negative public opinion about the employment of nuclear fission plants in many countries worldwide it is important to ascertain society that the risks associated with the operation of a fusion plant (e.g.…”

Section: Safety and Environment (Mission 5)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Scientific and technical challenges on the road towards fusion electricity

Donné¹,

Federici²,

Litaudon³

et al. 2017

J. Inst.

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A: The goal of the European Fusion Roadmap is to deliver fusion electricity to the grid early in the second half of this century. It breaks the quest for fusion energy into eight missions, and for each of them it describes a research and development programme to address all the open technical gaps in physics and technology and estimates the required resources. It points out the needs to intensify industrial involvement and to seek all opportunities for collaboration outside Europe. The roadmap covers three periods: the short term, which runs parallel to the European Research Framework Programme Horizon 2020, the medium term and the long term.ITER is the key facility of the roadmap as it is expected to achieve most of the important milestones on the path to fusion power. Thus, the vast majority of present resources are dedicated to ITER and its accompanying experiments. The medium term is focussed on taking ITER into operation and bringing it to full power, as well as on preparing the construction of a demonstration power plant DEMO, which will for the first time demonstrate fusion electricity to the grid around the middle of this century. Building and operating DEMO is the subject of the last roadmap phase: the long term. Clearly, the Fusion Roadmap is tightly connected to the ITER schedule. Three key milestones are the first operation of ITER, the start of the DT operation in ITER and reaching the full performance at which the thermal fusion power is 10 times the power put in to the plasma. The Engineering Design Activity of DEMO needs to start a few years after the first ITER plasma, while the start of the construction phase will be a few years after ITER reaches full performance. In this way ITER can give viable input to the design and development of DEMO. Because the neutron fluence in DEMO will be much higher than in ITER, it is important to develop and validate materials that can handle these very high neutron loads. For the testing of the materials, a dedicated 14 MeV neutron source is needed. This DEMO Oriented Neutron Source (DONES) is therefore an important facility to support the fusion roadmap. K: Nuclear instruments and methods for hot plasma diagnostics; Instrumentation for neutron sources

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“…4) reports the main differences between ITER and DEMO directly relevant for safety analyses: With respect to the former, the latter will be equipped with a breeding blanket for the tritium on-site production, so the magnets will be part of a reactor where a proper confinement of the tritium must be ensured (any catastrophic failure of a magnet on the primary containment may have radiological consequences). Moreover, DEMO will have to demonstrate a high availability of the machine 4,5 (for power production purposes). Correspondingly, the higher utilization factor will lead to a higher neutron flux, with a consequent increase of the displacements per atom (dpa) and of the damage to the structural materials.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identification of the Postulated Initiating Events of Accidents Occurring in a Toroidal Field Magnet of the EU DEMO

Bonifetto

Pedroni

Savoldi

et al. 2019

Fusion Science and Technology

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The design of the European Union (EU) DEMO reactor magnet system, currently ongoing within the EUROfusion consortium, will take advantage of the know-how developed during the design and manufacturing of ITER magnets; however, DEMO will suffer some new, more severe challenges, e.g., larger tritium inventory and higher neutron fluence, both having an impact on safety functions accomplished, among the other systems, also by the magnets. For these reasons, and in view of the need to demonstrate a high availability of the reactor (aimed at electricity production), a new, more systematic assessment of the system safety is required. As a contribution in this direction, the initiating events (IEs) of the most critical accident sequences in the EU DEMO magnet system (with special reference to the toroidal field magnets) are identified here, adopting first a functional analysis and then a failure mode, effects, and criticality analysis. In particular, the following are provided: (1) the EU DEMO magnet system is subdivided into functionally independent subsystems and components (e.g., the magnets, their cooling circuits, and their power supply system); (2) the relevant failure modes of each subsystem are systematically identified, together with the corresponding causes and consequences; (3) a list of IEs is compiled, leading to scenarios that may compromise the magnet safety and availability. Finally, the so-called postulated IEs are selected as the most challenging IEs for the safety of the magnet system. This analysis initializes a path leading to a risk-informed design, i.e., the identification of safety issues that could be addressed at the design level instead of introducing expensive mitigation measures after the design completion.

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Lessons learnt from ITER safety & licensing for DEMO and future nuclear fusion facilities

Cited by 59 publications

References 13 publications

Overview of EU DEMO design and R&D activities

Overview of EU DEMO design and R&D activities

Scientific and technical challenges on the road towards fusion electricity

Identification of the Postulated Initiating Events of Accidents Occurring in a Toroidal Field Magnet of the EU DEMO

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