Incorporation of lithium lead eutectic as a working fluid in RELAP5 and preliminary safety assessment of LLCS

Abstract The current work involves thermal hydraulic calculation of Lithium Lead Cooling System (LLCS) for the Indian test blanket module (TBM) for testing in International Thermonuclear Experimental reactor (ITER). It uses the RELAP portion of RELAP/SCDAPSIM/MOD4.0. Lithium-lead eutectic (LLE) has been used as multiplier, breeder and coolant in TBM. Thermodynamic and transport properties of the LLE have been incorporated into the code. The main focus of this study is to check the heat transfer capability of LLE as coolant for TBM system for steady state and the considered anticipated operational occurrences (AOO's), namely, loss of heat source, loss of primary flow and loss of secondary flow. The six heat transfer correlation (reported for liquid metals in the literature) has been tested for steady state analysis of LLCS loop and results are roughly same for all of them. A good agreement has been observed between the operating conditions of LLCS with those of RELAP5 calculations. Results from transient calculations show that a maximum temperature of 875 K is attained during a 300 s loss of primary flow (LLE).