Integration of fluid dynamics into activation calculations for fusion

Berry, T.; Nobs, C.R.; Dubas, Aleksander; Worrall, R.; Eade, T.; Naish, J.; Packer, L.W.

doi:10.1016/j.fusengdes.2021.112894

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…The water activation product concentrations are considered passive scalars and their transport in the coolant loop is a coupled neutronic/fluiddynamic problem since the source terms of the leading equations have a nuclear nature [2]. Such a problem is very computationally demanding, as it requires the proper balance between accuracy and reasonable computation time and in recent years it has also attracted increasing interest in the field of nuclear fusion [2][3][4][5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a nuclear system cooled by water, the endothermic charged-particle reactions 16 O (n,p) 16 N (with threshold energy of ∼10.2 MeV) and 17 O (n,p) 17 N (with threshold energy of ∼8.4 MeV) are the principal sources of water radioactivity during operation [13,14]. Finally, it is observed that the issue of the reaction 2 H (n,γ) 3 H in the divertor PHTSs water has not been considered in this work. The problem of Tritium production and transport in tokamaks is very challenging as it embeds several phenomena: its production by Deuterium and/or 7 Li (in the divertor, related to the presence of Lithium hydroxide for water chemistry control), implantation in the plasma-facing components, permeation and so on.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Water activation products generation and transport in DEMO divertor

Chiovaro,

Quartararo,

Avona

et al. 2024

Nucl. Fusion

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In water-cooled nuclear reactors, the issue of neutron-activated products transport along the Primary Heat Transfer System (PHTS) is very demanding, as it is a coupled neutronic / fluid-dynamic problem requiring a challenging balance between accuracy and reasonable computational time. This work addresses the transport of water activation products in large hydraulic circuits. Regarding the nuclear calculations, the assessment of the production rates of the radioisotope concentrations has been performed by Monte Carlo analyses adopting the MCNP5.1.6 code, while forthe transportation calculations, an innovative method has been expressly developed. It foresees a one-dimensional nodalization, in a MATLAB-Simulink environment, of the hydraulic circuit considered with a Computational Fluid-Dynamic (CFD) characterization (by ANSYS CFX code) of the nodes under neutron flux, that is the components where radioisotopes are formed, and the highest gradients of concentration are present. The method was compared with one-dimensional models not supported by fluid-dynamic analysis. The results of this comparison showed that in cases involving fairly complicated geometries and radioisotopes with a small half-life, CFD analyses are necessary to achieve adequate accuracy. The procedure was applied to very large and rather complex hydraulic circuits like the divertor PHTSs of DEMO fusion reactor to obtain the concentrations of the activation products of the water constituents (16N, 17N, 19O, 14C, 41Ar) along such systems.

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