Neutronic analysis of ITER radial x-ray camera

The radial x-ray camera(RXC) is designed to measure the poloidal profile of plasma x-ray emission with high spatial and temporal resolution. The RXC diagnostic system consists of internal camera module and external camera module that view the core region and outer region through the vertical slots of the diagnostic first wall and diagnostics shield module of the equatorial port plug. To ensure the normal performance of the silicon photodiode array detectors of the cameras in the hard neutron irradiation environment in ITER tokamak, it is necessary to calculate neutron flux, radiation damage and the nuclear heating of the silicon photodiode array detectors and simulate the radiation maps of the range of RXC. This work estimated the nuclear environment of RXC based on Monte Carlo N-particle transport code, plasma scenarios of ITER tokamak and the RXC-integrated ITER CLITE model. The neutron flux of silicon photodiode array detectors and the lifetime of the silicon photodiode detector in the camera were calculated. The neutronic analysis results show that the shielding design has achieved the effect as expected and is able to guarantee the normal work of the detector during the ITER deuterium–deuterium phase without replacement, three detectors of the external camera can be operated during the whole deuterium–tritium phase without replacement.

Application of local Monte Carlo method in neutronics calculation of EAST radial neutron camera

The Local Monte Carlo(LMC)method is used to solve the problems of deep penetration and long time in the neutronics calculation of the radial neutron camera(RNC)diagnostic system on the experimental advanced superconducting tokamak(EAST),and the radiation distribution of the RNC and the neutron flux at the detector positions of each channel are obtained.Compared with the results calculated by the global variance reduction method,it is shown that the LMC calculation is reliable within the reasonable error range.The calculation process of LMC is analyzed in detail,and the transport process of radiation particles is simulated in two steps.In the first step,an integrated neutronics model considering the complex window environment and a neutron source model based on EAST plasma shape are used to support the calculation.The particle information on the equivalent surface is analyzed to evaluate the rationality of settings of equivalent surface source and boundary.Based on the characteristic that only a local geometric model is needed in the second step,it is shown that the LMC is an advantageous calculation method for the nuclear shielding design of tokamak diagnostic systems.