Return To: Session SE/P - Safety and Environment
Prev Page: Session SE/P - Safety and Environment
Next Page: (SE/P-03) Evaluation of Economical Introduction of Nuclear Fusion

(SE/P-02) Experimental and Analytical Studies on Thermal-Hydraulic Performance of a Vacuum Vessel Pressure Suppression System in ITER

K. Takase¹⁾, H. Akimoto^1)
 
1) Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute, Tokai-mura, Ibaraki-ken, Japan

Abstract.  If cooling tubes of plasma-facing components (PFCs) in ITER are broken, water under high temperature and pressure will be discharged into a vacuum vessel (VV). Then, the discharged water will impinge on the hot surface of the PFCs and evaporate. As a result, the VV will be filled with vapor and the pressure inside the VV may increase rapidly. This is called an Ingress-of-Coolant Event (ICE). The authors constructed an integrated ICE test facility to obtain the validation data for fusion safety analysis codes and investigate if the ITER vacuum vessel pressure suppression system (VVPSS) design and approach are adequate. The integrated ICE test facility simulates the ITER VVPSS components with a scaling factor of 1/1600 to the PFC volume in ITER. In addition, the authors carried out three-dimensional computations with the modified Transient Reactor Analysis Code (TRAC) to simulate numerically the pressure rise behavior at the ICE. From a series of experimental and analytical results it was found that the ITER VVPSS is very effective to reduce the pressure rise during the ICE and the modified TRAC can predict thermal-hydraulic characteristics in ITER with sufficiently accuracy.

Read the full paper in PDF format.