Neutronics and thermo-hydraulic design of supercritical-water cooled solid breeder TBM

• A supercritical-water cooled solid breeder test blanket module (SWCB TBM) was designed.
• The neutronics calculations show that the tritium breeding ratio (TBR) of SWCB TBM is 1.17.
• The outlet temperature of SWCB TBM can reach as high as 500 °C.
• Both thermal stress and deformation of the SWCB TBM design are within safety limits.

In this paper, the supercritical-water cooled solid breeder test blanket module (SWCB TBM), using the supercritical water as the coolant, Li4SiO4 lithium ceramic pebbles as a breeder, and beryllium pebbles as a neutron multiplier, was designed and analyzed for ITER.The results of neutronics, thermo-hydraulic and thermo-mechanical analysis are presented for the SWCB TBM. Neutronics calculations show that the proposed TBM has high tritium breeding ratio and power density. The tritium breeding ratio (TBR) of the proposed design is 1.17, which is greater than that of 1.15 required for tritium self-sufficiency. The thermo-hydraulic calculation proved that the TBM components can be effectively cooled to the allowable temperature with the temperature of outlet reaching 500 °C. According to thermo-mechanics calculation results, the first wall with the width of 17 mm is safe and the deformation of first wall is far below the limited value. All the results showed that the current TBM design was reasonable under the ITER normal condition.