Preliminary accident analysis of Loss of Off-Site Power and In-Box LOCA for the CFETR helium cooled solid breeder blanket

• Published in: Fusion engineering and design Vol. 118; pp. 142 - 150
• Main Authors: Lian, Qiang, Cui, Shijie, Tian, Wenxi, Zhang, Jing, Zhang, Dalin, Su, G.H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.05.2017; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Accident analysis; Accidents; Breeder reactors; CFETR; Cooling; Design optimization; Engineering test reactors; Forensic engineering; Fusion; HCSB blanket; Helium; In-Box LOCA; Loss of coolant accidents; Loss of off-Site power; Nuclear engineering; Nuclear reactors; Nuclear safety; RELAP5; Tritium; RELAP5; CFETR; Loss of off-Site power; In-Box LOCA; HCSB blanket
• ISSN: 0920-3796; 1873-7196
• DOI: 10.1016/j.fusengdes.2017.02.090

•The CFETR HCSB blanket has been investigated using RELAP5.•Loss of Off-Site Power is investigated.•The parametric analyses during In-Box LOCA are investigated.•The HCSB blanket for CFETR is designed with sufficient decay heat removal capability. As one of three candidate tritium breeding blanket concepts for Chinese Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR), a conceptual structure of helium cooled solid breeder (HCSB) blanket was recently proposed. In this paper, the preliminary thermal-hydraulic and safety analyses of the typical outboard equatorial blanket module (No.12) have been carried out using RELAP5/Mod3.4 code. Two design basis accidents are investigated based on the steady-state initialization, including Loss of Off-Site Power and In-Box Loss of Coolant Accident (LOCA). The differences between circulator coast down and circulator rotor locked under Loss of Off-Site Power are compared. Regarding the In-Box LOCA, the influences of different break sizes and locations are thoroughly analyzed based on a relatively accurate modeling method of the heat structures in sub-modules. The analysis results show that the blanket and the combined helium cooling system (HCS) are designed with sufficient decay heat removal capability for both accidents, which can preliminarily verify the feasibility of the conceptual design. The research work can also provide an important reference for parameter optimization of the blanket and its HCS in the next stage.