Preliminary neutronics design and analysis of helium cooled solid breeder blanket for CFETR

•Neutronics design of a helium cooled solid breeder blanket for CFETR was presented.•The breeding zones parallel to FW and perpendicular to FW were optimized.•A series of neutronics analyses for the proposed blanket were shown.

Chinese Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR) is a test tokamak reactor being designed in China to bridge the gap between ITER and future fusion power plant. Tritium self-sufficiency is one of the most important issues for CFETR and the tritium breeding ratio (TBR) is recommended not less than 1.2. As one of the candidates, a helium cooled solid breeder blanket for CFETR superconducting tokamak option was proposed. In the concept, radial arranged U-shaped breeding zones are adopted for higher TBR and simpler structure. In this work, three-dimensional neutronics design and analysis of the blanket were performed using the Monte Carlo N-Particle transport code MCNP with IAEA data library FENDL-2.1. Tritium breeding capability of the proposed blanket was assessed and the breeding zones parallel to first wall (FW) and perpendicular to FW were optimized. Meanwhile, the nuclear heating analysis and shielding performance were also presented for later thermal and structural analysis. The results showed that the blanket could well meet the tritium self-sufficiency target and the neutron shield could satisfy the design requirements.