Preliminary thermal-hydraulic analysis of the EU-DEMO Helium-Cooled Pebble Bed fusion reactor by using the RELAP5-3D system code

Analysis of the Thermo-Mechanical Behaviour of the EU DEMO Water-Cooled Lithium Lead Central Outboard Blanket Segment under an Optimized Thermal Field

“…Nevertheless, the WCLL COB design presented at the end of the pre-conceptual phase [3] was not mature enough to allow reliable thermal-hydraulic assessments for the prediction of its thermal field. In any case, such an analysis would require a huge modelling effort, followed by a tremendous computational burden, which would entail the adoption of strong assumptions leading to a certain margin of uncertainties in the results [4]. Hence, an alternative procedure was developed [5] and applied in this study in order to predict a reliable 3D thermal field for the WCLL COB without performing its full thermal-hydraulic analysis, taking into account the radial and poloidal dependence of the thermal loads (namely, nuclear heating and heat flux on the FW surface).…”

Thermal-hydraulic study of the EU-DEMO Helium Cooled Pebble Bed Breeding Blanket Primary Heat Transport System

“…First efforts have been focused on creating a TRACE nodalization which could realistically predict the response of the system with an acceptable computational time. Afterwards, the core point of the activity has been the code-to-code benchmark with results previously obtained with the RELAP5-3D code [9] to estimate the impact of the physical models, numerical resolution schemes, and modelling techniques adopted on the predictive capabilities of the system codes considered and to obtain a preliminary validation of their use in the field of fusion reactors. The models, assumptions and analysis results are herein presented and critically argued.…”

Development and application of an alternative modelling approach for the thermo-mechanical analysis of a DEMO water-cooled lithium lead breeding blanket segment

“…Nevertheless, the full thermal assessment of a whole BB segment requires, firstly, the detailed knowledge of its cooling system layout. Seeing as the current design of the DEMO Water Cooled Lithium Lead (WCLL) BB is not mature enough to allow such a kind of assessment, which would require, in any case, a considerable modelling effort as well as a huge computational burden [5], assumptions and alternative models are necessary to realistically predict the thermal field of a whole WCLL BB segment. Hence, the development of alternative calculation procedures capable of predicting a realistic thermal field for a whole BB segment, without the necessity to directly perform the full thermal analysis of the whole component, can represent an important outcome.…”