Neutronics assessment for Detailed Helium-Cooled And Water-Cooled DEMO Breeder Blanket Concepts

The Water-Cooled Lithium–Lead Breeding Blanket (WCLL) and Helium-Cooled Pebble Bed (HCPB) are two leading breeding blanket concept candidates to become the driver blanket for the EU-DEMO reactor. As a breeding material, WCLL uses Lithium–Lead alloy, HCPB uses lithium orthosilicate, and all breeding units have tubes for cooling purposes. The same concepts, as neutrons multiplier, use Li–Pb alloy and Be. The estimation of neutron fluxes, nuclear heating and dose rates are essential to assess the nuclear performance of the breeding blankets. It is a necessary calculation that supports the design of the two breeder blanket concepts of the DEMO nuclear fusion reactor. Two widely used codes, MCNP6 with FENDL-3.2 nuclear data library and ADVANTG, which employs the FW-Cadis method to reduce the variance of Monte Carlo simulation results, were used in this paper.