Thermal-Hydraulics in Nuclear Fusion Technology: R&D and Applications

Dear Colleagues,

The perspective of having an almost inexhaustible source of energy has driven worldwide research initiatives on nuclear fusion technology, which have the main representation with the construction of the international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject (ITER) in Europe. In this framework, thermal hydraulics is a key discipline which is essential for design and safety demands. Thermal hydraulics is employed in the design phase of the systems and components to demonstrate the performances, to ensure the reliability, and to guarantee efficient and economical operation. It is in charge of investigating the transients of the engineering systems: this includes safety analysis aimed at demonstrating that the operation is safe and consistent with the regulatory authority requirements.

In nuclear fusion technology, thermal hydraulics is required for the design and analysis of cooling and ancillary systems, such as the blanket (i.e. breeding, test or shielding), the divertor, the cryogenic, and the balance of plant systems, as well as the tritium carrier, extraction and recovery systems. Thus, the analyses involve different fluids (water, non-condensable gases, liquid metals) in a broad spectrum of operative conditions (from cryogenic to high temperatures, from vacuum to high pressures), which make their compatibility with the materials challenging.

Although the knowledge of thermal hydraulics benefits from the tremendous efforts conducted for the nuclear fission technology development, it still has remarkable gaps when fusion technology needs are concerned.

Numerical tools, such as well-established system codes, suffer because fluids, parameter ranges, and a field of applications are outside their development and validation boundaries. More sophisticated and complex CFD codes are challenged by the geometrical dimension and complexity of the domains, and by the multi-physics requirements of the analyses.

A considerable amount of resources is devoted at the international level for constructing experimental infrastructures, and for establishing and conducting experimental programs, in full scale and scaled-down facilities, which are aimed at demonstrating the technical feasibility of system and component designs, as well as at generating reference databases to support code development and validation.

In view of the above, it has been proposed to collect the technical status and challenges, and to document the recent scientific advancements of “Thermal-hydraulics in Nuclear Fusion” in a Special Issue. Scientific and technical contributions include, but are not limited to:

• Thermal hydraulic analyses of systems and components, including magneto-hydrodynamics;
• Safety investigations of systems and components;
• Numerical models development;
• Code development and application;
• Codes coupling methodology;
• Code assessment and validation, including benchmarks;
• Experimental infrastructures design and operation;
• Experimental campaigns and investigations;
• Scaling issue in experiments.

Papers are invited from experts working in areas mentioned above for publication in the Special Issue.

Dr. Alessandro Del Nevo
Dr. Marica Eboli
Guest Editors

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