Draining and drying process development of the Tokamak Cooling Water System of ITER

Highlights: • A thermal-hydraulic model using RELAP was developed for the ITER FW/BLK modules to determine design parameters for the nitrogen blowout flow rate and pressure. • The analysis indicates that as low as 2 MPa of pressure difference over the blanket modules will sufficiently evacuate the water in blankets. • A limited validation study indicates that the analysis yields less conservative results to compare against data collected from experiments. Therefore, the designed blow out flow of the drying system was selected with a large margin above the measured values to ensure the blow out operation. - Abstract: The ITER Organization (IO) developed a thermal-hydraulic (TH) model of the complex first wall and blanket (FW/BLK) cooling channels to determine gas flow rate and pressure required to effectively blow out the water in the FW/BLK. In addition, US ITER conducted experiments for selected geometries of FW/BLK flow channels to predict the blowout parameters. The analysis indicates that as low as 2 MPa of pressure difference over the blanket modules will ensure substantial evacuation of the water in blankets with just a few percent remaining in the blanket flow channels. A limited validation study indicates that the analysis yields less conservative results to compare against data collected from experiments. Therefore, the designed blow out flow of the drying system was selected with a large margin above the measured values to ensure the blow out operation.