Effects of Neutron Source Models on Neutron Wall Loading in the EAST Tokamak

Abstract

As a significant input for neutronics analysis of tokamak devices, the plasma neutron source is a bridge connecting fusion plasma physics and engineering design. A plasma neutron source model is established based on the EAST plasma configuration. The maximum neutron wall loading (NWL) is near the outboard midplane and is more than ~20% that of the inboard midplane. The investigations demonstrate that special care should be taken for radiation shielding and protection of the key components located on the outboard midplane and on the inboard midplane. The effect of the tritium accumulation on neutronics analysis should be carefully considered for EAST tokamak D-D plasma operations.

The effect of density peaking (DP) on the neutronics analysis is also investigated. It is evident that the peak NWLs are all near the outboard midplane and that the poloidal distributions of the NWL are slightly different for these cases. With increasing DP, both the outboard and inboard peak NWLs decrease. However, the decrease in NWL is very small; NWL decreases only 11% when the neutron source peak increases about 1.5 times.

Keywords:

• Neutron source
• neutron wall loading
• density peaking
• EAST

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge useful discussions with V. S. Chan, and acknowledge the ShenMa High Performance Computing Cluster at the Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China with contract no. 2019YFE03040003 and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 12005100).