Title:
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Fusion power : safety and environmental analysis using integrated, three-dimensional computer modelling
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Fusion power studies provide insight into physics and technology issues that need
addressing to develop fusion as an optimal electricity generation alternative in the near
future. As part of them, calculations are performed of different parameters important for the
safety and environmental assessments of power plant concepts based on magnetically
confined burning plasmas. These assessments help optimise such concepts, and involve
many different physics disciplines and the use of large computational codes and nuclear
databases.
The work presented in this thesis has been developed within the Fusion Technology group
of the UKAEA Fusion Division, under the framework of the European Power Plant
Conceptual Study. For the safety and environmental assessment of four different fusion
power plant concepts, estimations were made of the amount, characteristics and
radiotoxicity of the activated material arising from neutron irradiation of the structures.
Results were used to analyse: (a) public safety, through the bounding accident analysis,
obtaining maximum temperature excursions following hypothetical, internally-driven,
worst-case accidents, and (b) the radioactive waste arising from the operation of the plant,
and in particular the possibility to re-utilise some of the irradiated material. Calculations
were assisted by, and helped in the development of, a new computational tool coupling the
neutron transport, activation and thermal analyses to the same three-dimensional geometry
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