Preliminary Assessment of Cooling Water Chemistry for Fusion Power Plants

Abstract

The determination of the water chemistry for cooling systems of nuclear fusion plants is under debate. It should be tailored for different types of fusion reactors: either experimental, e.g., ITER, JT-60SA, and DTT, or aimed at power generation, e.g., DEMO, given the different operation requirements. This paper presents the dual approach involving experiments and computer simulations chosen for the definition of DEMO water chemistry. Experimental work was performed to assess the corrosion susceptibility of reduced activation ferritic martensitic EUROFER 97 and AISI 316L in different water chemistry regimes. At the same time, the low corrosivity requirement brings an additional safety aspect for the radiation protection since some neutron-activated corrosion products (ACPs) create a gamma radiation when deposited outside the plasma chamber in components accessible to operators and these must be minimized. To evaluate the ACP inventory for DEMO, assessments were carried out using a reference computer code. Preliminary experimental activities to define the water chemistry of DTT under construction at ENEA were also conducted. The comparison of code results with experiments is two-fold important: for the validation of the computer code models and to determine data that are necessary to perform calculations.