8–12 Jun 2026
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Campus north
Europe/Berlin timezone

Neutron irradiation conditions in the IFMIF-DONES Test Cell and Complementary Experiments Room R160

11 Jun 2026, 14:10
20m
FTU (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Campus north)

FTU

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Campus north

Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen
Oral Facility nuclear design challenges Neutron Source Facilities Design and Exploitation

Speaker

Dr Arkady Serikov (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT))

Description

This work presents computational neutronic analyses performed for the safety of the IFMIF-DONES Target Assembly components and parametric analyses of the Neutron Beam Tube and Shutter (NBT&S) diameter to increase the collimated neutron flux at the entrance to Complementary Experiments Room 160 (CER R160). The IFMIF-DONES project is under construction in Spain. The radiation transport parallel computations have been performed on the CPU-based partition of the Pitagora supercomputer hosted by CINECA in the framework of the MCHIFI (Monte Carlo High Fidelity) HPC EUROfusion project. Neutron spectra and atomic and nuclear responses have been calculated using the Monte Carlo MCNP code. The D+ ions are accelerated in IFMIF-DONES up to 40 MeV energy and 125 mA current. Heating calculations [1] in liquid Li and steel at the area of the deuteron (D+) footprint require the inclusion of the heat contributions of charged D+ ion particles. The integral heating calculations in IFMIF-DONES Test Cell (TC) components reveal that D+ energy deposition in liquid Li at the thin Bragg peak, with a D+ beam footprint area of 20x5 cm2, contributes 97% of the total heating in the whole Test Cell volume, delivering 5 MW heat power of D+ beam to liquid lithium.

A study of neutron flux growth at the entrance to CER due to increasing the NBT&S diameter has been performed. The neutron flux isolines are plotted and compared for three variants of the NBT&S diameter: 15 cm, 21 cm, and 30 cm. The illustration of how the streaming along the NBT&S depends on the aperture diameter is presented. Given the current design of NBT&S, the diameter could be increased from 15 cm to approximately 21 cm, making the total neutron flux grow to 13% at the CER entrance. The principal flux growth is defined by the characteristic dimension of the neutron source size projection of ~45 cm at the entrance from TC to the NBT&S.

References
[1] A. Serikov, et al., “Computational neutronics analyses of deuteron interactions with lithium target in IFMIF-DONES for fusion applications,” 5th Fusion HPC Workshop, online, November 21-22, 2024, https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.32675.57128, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXF0BpS_eyk&t=6179s

Formatted abstract uploaded? Done.

Author

Dr Arkady Serikov (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT))

Co-authors

Dr Claudio Torregrosa (IFMIF-DONES España) Dr Concepcion Oliver (Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas (CIEMAT), Madrid, Spain) Mr Danyl Pérez-Sánchez (IFMIF-DONES España) Dieter Leichtle Dr Francisco Martín-Fuertes (IFMIF-DONES España) Dr Sergej Gordeev (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)) Yuefeng Qiu (KIT)

Presentation materials