Temperature transients of a fusion–fission ITER pebble bed reactor in loss of coolant accident

In this preliminary scoping study, post-accident temperature transients of several fusion–fission designs utilizing ITER-FEAT-like parameters and fission pebble bed fuel technology are examined using a 1-D cylindrical matlab heat transfer code along with conventional fission decay heat approximations. Scenarios studied include systems with no additional passive safety features to systems with melting reflectors designed to increase emissivity after reaching a specified temperature. Results show that for a total fission power of ∼1400–2800 MW, two of the realistic variants investigated are passively safe. The crucial time, defined as the time when either any structural part of the fusion–fission tokamak reaches melting point, or when the pebble fuel reaches 1873 K, ranges from 5.7 to 76 h for the unsafe configurations. Additionally, it is illustrated that, fundamentally, the LOCA characteristics of pure fission pebble beds and fusion–fission pebble beds are different. Namely, the former depends on the pebble fuelʹs large thermal capacity, along with external radiation and natural convective cooling, while the latter depends significantly more on the tokamakʹs sizeable total internal heat capacity. This difference originates from the fusion–fission reactorʹs conflicting goal of having to minimize heat transfer to the magnets during normal operation. These results are discussed in the context of overall fusion–fission reactor design and safety.