Design and preliminary safety analysis of a helium cooled molten lithium test blanket module for the ITER in Korea

Through a consideration of the requirements for a DEMO-relevant blanket concept, Korea (KO) has proposed a He cooled molten lithium (HCML) blanket with ferritic steel (FS) as a structural material in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) program. The design and the performance of the KO HCML test blanket module (TBM) and the preliminary results of the safety analyses such as activation, decay heat, and accident analysis by a loss of coolant are introduced briefly in this paper. KO HCML TBM uses He as a coolant and Li is used as a tritium breeder by considering its potential advantages. Two layers of graphite are inserted as a reflector in the breeder zone to increase the tritium breeding ratio (TBR) and the shielding performances. Performance analyses were performed with the MCCARD code for the neutronics, the CFX-10 code for the thermal–hydraulics, and with the ANSYS-10 code for the thermal–mechanical analysis. For the safety analyses, the activation and decay heat were obtained from the MCCARD and Origen codes. From the obtained decay heat, an accident analysis was performed.