Development and validation in water of FLUNED, an open-source tool for fluid activation calculations

• DOI: 10.1016/j.cpc.2023.108807
• Publication Date: 2023-06-03T00:38:08Z
• Authors: Marco De Pietri; Javier Alguacil; Eduardo Rodríguez; Rafael Juárez
• Keywords: Neutron Transport; Fusion power; TRIGA

In nuclear fusion installations, high-energy plasma neutron activates the cooling and breeding fluids, generating a mobile distributed source of radiation. water-cooled reactors, such as ITER DEMO, most concerning radioisotopes present in coolant are 16N 17N. Their prompt emission impacts design, safety, and, ultimately, economics plant it can be dominant radiation regions far from plasma. The flowing condition makes calculation radioisotope concentrations within an irradiated circuit particularly challenging requires coupling neutronics fluid dynamics characteristics problem. Recent works showed that, except for simple limited cases, implementation Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods. Nevertheless, use ad-hoc methodologies or application proprietary codes has hampered participation formation common benchmarks among community. this work, we development open-source tool called FLUNED that studies evolution concentration radioactive species inside considers carrier. is based on CFD code OpenFOAM its modular nature to complement continuity equation with decay production terms. second part show validation using experimental data water activation experiment performed at FNG Frascati December 2019. was by producing computational chain simulated main components estimated counts two detectors caused 17N isotopes. Finally, positive comparison between calculated values allowed us establish experiments reactors.