Tritium self-sufficiency of HCPB blanket modules for DEMO considering time-varying neutron flux spectra and material compositions

Highlights: • Simulations on the tritium breeding performance of HCPB blanket modules were done. • MCNP5 and FISPACT were used for coupled transport and activation calculations. • Material transmutation affects the neutron flux spectra within the blanket modules. • The consequences of time-dependent spectra on TBR and tritium self-sufficiency were investigated. -- Abstract: Significant transmutation of solid-type breeding blanket materials affects the time and spatial variation of neutron energy within such materials. This has an impact on simulation assumptions required to accurately assess tritium surplus quantities for conceptual power plant devices. This paper details an investigation, via simulation, of the consequences for the tritium breeding ratio and the tritium self-sufficiency of a DEMO concept with homogeneous Helium-Cooled Pebble Bed blanket modules containing Li4SiO4 ceramic breeder material. For this purpose, a code was developed to couple MCNP5 and FISPACT to supply material compositions from activation calculations to the neutron transport calculation in an iterative loop covering several time steps. Simulation results are presented for a simple 1D spherical device model and a DEMO tokamak model