Nuclear analysis of an ITER blanket module

ITER blanket system is the reactor's plasma-facing component, it is mainly devoted to provide the thermal and nuclear shielding of the Vacuum Vessel and external ITER components, being intended also to act as plasma limiter. It consists of 440 individual modules which are located in the inboard, upper and outboard regions of the reactor. In this paper attention has been focused on to a single outboard blanket module located in the equatorial zone, whose nuclear response under irradiation has been investigated following a numerical approach based on the Monte Carlo method and adopting the MCNP5 code. The main features of this blanket module nuclear behaviour have been determined, paying particular attention to energy and spatial distribution of the neutron flux and deposited nuclear power together with the spatial distribution of its volumetric density. Moreover, the neutronic damage of the structural material has also been investigated through the evaluation of displacement per atom and helium and hydrogen production rates. Finally, an activation analysis has been performed with FISPACT inventory code using, as input, the evaluated neutron spectrum to assess the module specific activity and contact dose rate after irradiation under a specific operating scenario. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York.