Abstract
On the road to achieving fusion energy production at a commercial level, China has proposed the design of a nuclear fusion reactor based on the tokamak configuration. Aimed to produce self-sustained burning plasma and a closed tritium breeding cycle, this device is expected to provide a bridge between ITER and DEMO designs.
The Breeding Blanket (BB) is one of the key technological challenges to be designed in order to guarantee sufficient tritium production, heat removal capabilities and radiation shielding protection. Two preliminary designs of the Helium-Cooled Solid Breeder (HCSB) blanket have been suggested to be subjected to further investigation. Despite the fact that both designs use the same materials, they present completely different geometrical arrangements. In the present analysis, these two concepts of the HCSB are examined, addressing the critical design issues that affect the performance of the system. A neutronic analysis is performed to calculate the Tritium Breeding Ratio (TBR), which is a crucial parameter to meet tritium production requirements. Based on this investigation, the cooling capacity of the reactor is analyzed with the help of a Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) software through a dynamic evaluation. Valuable conclusions can be extracted from the results of this work, which can be referenced for investigations regarding further studies of HCSB blankets.
