Neutronics Experiment on a Water Cooled Ceramic Breeder Blanket Mockup using D-T Neutrons

Abstract: Accurate validation of the neutronics and tritium breeding performance of fusion blankets is critical to the realization of practical fusion energy output. Such validation relies on the integration of high-fidelity numerical simulations with experimental measurement, and the latter is of paramount importance. In this study, dedicated neutronic experiments were performed with a 14 MeV D-T neutron source on a mock-up of the Water Cooled Ceramic Breeder (WCCB) blanket for the China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR). These experiments provided an experimental validation of the calculated tritium production rate (TPR) and neutron spectral index for the WCCB blanket concept, together with an assessment of the discrepancies among different nuclear data libraries. This paper presents a detailed description of the WCCB blanket experiment, including measurements of the TPR and the activation rates of Al, In, and Nb, with associated uncertainties of 5.02\% and 5.13\%$\sim$6.07\%, respectively. The experimental data were analyzed via the MCNP code in conjunction with several nuclear data libraries. The comparison showed good qualitative agreement between experimental measurements and numerical calculations in terms of the spatial trends, while significant quantitative discrepancies were observed among the calculation results obtained with individual nuclear data libraries.