Design evaluation of the semi-prototype for the ITER blanket first wall qualification

Abstract

For the second qualification of the First Wall (FW) procurement of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a semi-prototype of the FW has been designed with increased local surface heat flux up to 5 MW/m(2). With the given conditions, the new semi-prototype design was simulated with the commercial CFD code, the ANSYS-11. The results show that the semi-prototype temperature exceeds the melting temperature of Be, and the current design is required to be modified. In order to enhance cooling, a hypervapotron was added in the design and an analysis with the same code was performed. The results show that the temperature with the hypervapotron reduced by around 100 degrees C but it was still higher than the melting temperature of Be. The hypervapotron mock-up was fabricated and tested with a variance of inlet coolant flow rates and heat fluxes of up to 1.75 MW/m(2) using the second Korea Heat Load Test (KoHLT-2) facility, in which heat was loaded by a graphite heater through radiation heating. Wall and coolant temperatures were measured and compared with the simulation results. So far, there is a large difference between the experiments and the simulation, and a next experiment is being prepared.