LOCA analysis for Korean helium cooled solid breeder TBM

摘要

One of the major ITER goals is test blanket module (TBM) program which is for the demonstration of the breeding capability that would lead to tritium self-sufficiency in a reactor and the extraction of high-grade heat suitable for electricity generation under the ITER fusion environment. While the engineering design of Korean helium cooled solid breeder (HCSB) TBM and its ancillary systems has been performed, a safety assessment on different possible accident scenarios should be carried out for the purpose of licensing. In this paper, accident analyses for several loss of coolant accident (LOCA) cases were performed in order to assess safety aspects of the TBM design using RELAP5/MOD3.2. Since the TBM forms a loop with helium cooling system (HCS) which is one of ancillary systems required for removing heat deposited in the TBM by neutron wall loading and surface heat flux from plasma, it is necessary to model the complete loop for accident analysis. In this study, the helium passage including the TBM and HCS was nodalized for each accident scenario. The TBM and HCS components were modeled as the associated heat structures provided by RELAP5 to include heat transfer across solid boundaries. Based on computational results it was found that current design of the TBM is robust from the safety point of view.