Calculation of Radioactivity and Dose Rate of Activated Corrosion Products in Water-Cooled Fusion Reactor

Abstract EN

In water-cooled reactor, the dominant radioactive source term under normal operation is activated corrosion products (ACPs), which have an important impact on reactor inspection and maintenance.

A three-node transport model of ACPs was introduced into the new version of ACPs source term code CATE in this paper, which makes CATE capable of theoretically simulating the variation and the distribution of ACPs in a water-cooled reactor and suitable for more operating conditions.

For code testing, MIT PWR coolant chemistry loop was simulated, and the calculation results from CATE are close to the experimental results from MIT, which means CATE is available and credible on ACPs analysis of water-cooled reactor.

Then ACPs in the blanket cooling loop of water-cooled fusion reactor ITER under construction were analyzed using CATE and the results showed that the major contributors are the short-life nuclides, especially Mn-56.

At last a point kernel integration code ARShield was coupled with CATE, and the dose rate around ITER blanket cooling loop was calculated.

Results showed that after shutting down the reactor only for 8 days, the dose rate decreased nearly one order of magnitude, which was caused by the rapid decay of the short-life ACPs.