Neutronics assessment for the ARIES advanced reactor studies
- Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)
To enhance the attractiveness of fusion reactors as a clean and safe source of energy, several recent tokamak designs have incorporated the environmental and safety constraints in the design from the beginning. As such, limitations have been imposed on the type of materials that can be used in the design and the potential of low neutron yield fuel cycles (like D-{sup 3}He) to fulfill the safety goals was investigated. Over the past 5 years, several designs have emerged highlighting the safety and environmental features of tokamaks. Theses designs are the ARIES (I,II,III and IV) and PULSAR (I and II) series. PULSAR designs are pulsed versions of ARIES-II and IV. All designs employ D-T fuel cycles except ARIES-III which is D-{sup 3}He fueled. Low activation materials such as SiC/SiC composites, vanadium alloys, and modified HT-9 ferritic steel were utilized as the main structural materials. Neutronics related issues were assessed for these designs. These include breeding capability of blankets, radiation damage to structural components, and shielding requirements. The D-T fueled designs need a blanket to breed tritium (T). The breeder of choice is ceramics for ARIES-I and IV and liquid metal for ARIES-II. ARIES-III employs pure shield to protect the magnets with no need for breeding blanket. It appears that the Li{sub 2}O breeder requires beryllium multiplier to achieve tritium self-sufficiency in the ARIES-IV design while the lithium has the ability to breed sufficient T in ARIES-II without multiplier. An overall tritium breeder ratio of 1.12 seems adequate for ARIES-II/IV. The 12% excess breeding is necessary to account for uncertainties in cross section data and to supply the T inventory for startup of new reactors.
- OSTI ID:
- 197039
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-940664-; TRN: 95:005767-0215
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: ISFNT-3: international symposium on fusion nuclear technology, Los Angeles, CA (United States), 27 Jun - 1 Jul 1994; Other Information: PBD: 1994; Related Information: Is Part Of Third international symposium on fusion nuclear technology; PB: 362 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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