Thermofluid-dynamic and thermal–structural assessment of the EU-DEMO WCLL “double bundle” Breeding Blanket concept left outboard segment

As part of the activities performed by the DEMO Central Team (DCT) to study alternative configurations of the Water-Cooled Lead Lithium (WCLL) Breeding Blanket (BB), to overcome the open issues that emerged at the end of the Pre-Conceptual Design phase, a new concept, the WCLL BB “double bundle” (db), was developed. This concept adopts an array of db tubes poloidally distributed inside the breeding zone, mimicking the arrangement inside heat exchangers. These are coaxial pipes the gap between which is filled with PbBi (or alternatively with gas and fins), which avoids direct contact between PbLi and water in case of in-box LOCA events. Similarly, the First Wall channel cooling water is separated from the PbLi. The use of PbBi as an inert fluid makes the Segment Box (SB) sizing less stringent: in the case of an in-box LOCA due to a break of the water cooling circuit inside the BB SB, the pressurized volume is only the PbBi one, instead of the whole SB volume as in the reference WCLL design configuration. Consequently, the total amount of steel inside the BB can be reduced, with benefits in terms of increased tritium breeding ratio. Within this framework, University of Palermo, in support of the DCT and under the EUROfusion action, preliminarily analysed the steady-state thermal, thermo-hydraulic and normal and off-normal thermo-mechanical performances of this concept, following a theoretical-numerical approach based on finite volume and finite element methods, and adopting the ANSYS CFX and ANSYS Mechanical codes. The analyses carried out allowed a preliminary optimization of the design, improving the thermal and thermo-mechanical performances of the WCLL-db BB, in compliance with the design requirements, while reducing the total steel amount. Models, assumptions and main results are herewith reported and critically discussed.