Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Neutronic and thermohydraulic blanket analysis for hybrid fusion-fission reactor during operation

  • Sergey V. Bedenko (Tomsk Polytechnic University) ;
  • Igor O. Lutsik (Tomsk Polytechnic University) ;
  • Vadim V. Prikhodko (Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics of Siberian Branch Russian Academy of Sciences) ;
  • Anton A. Matyushin (Joint Stock Company OKB Gidropress) ;
  • Sergey D. Polozkov (Tomsk Polytechnic University) ;
  • Vladimir M. Shmakov (Federal State Unitary Enterprise ) ;
  • Dmitry G. Modestov (Federal State Unitary Enterprise ) ;
  • Hector Rene Vega-Carrillo (Academic Unit of Nuclear Studies of the Autonomous University of Zacatecas)
  • Received : 2022.09.17
  • Accepted : 2023.03.26
  • Published : 2023.07.25
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Abstract

This work demonstrates the results of full-scale numerical experiments of a hybrid thorium-containing fuel plant operating in a state close to critical due to a controlled source of D-T neutrons. The proposed facility represented a level of generated power (~10-100 MWt) in a small pilot. In this work, the simulation of the D-T neutron plasma source operation in conjunction with the facility blanket was performed. The fission of fuel nuclei and the formation of spatial-energy release were studied in this simulation, in pulsed and stationary modes of the facility operation. The optimization results of neutronic and fluid dynamics studies to level the emerging offsets of the radial energy formed in the volume of the facility multiplying part due to the pulsed operation of the D-T neutron plasma source were presented. The results will be useful in improving the power control-based subcriticality monitoring method in coupled systems of the "pulsed neutron source-subcritical fuel assembly" type.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by the Russian Science Foundation under RSF grant No. 23-29-00131 (https://rscf.ru/en/project/23-29-00131/). The authors are also grateful to the center of TPU's "Physical and chemical methods of analysis". The authors are very grateful to the peer reviewers, whose comments allowed to improve the quality of the paper significantly.

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