The final goal of fusion power plants is to produce electricity in the grid. This is planned to be done by heating up water as with fission power plants or thermal power stations. In the case of magnetically confined fusion, neutrons released from the hot fusion plasma escape the magnetic confinement and finish in the wall heating up water. In the case of DEMO (DEMOnstration power plant), the neutron production will be large and the reactor materials have to be neutron-resistant. Thereby, neutronics becomes an increasingly important field of study.
To simulate the neutron transport in a fusion reactor, we have developed NEUTRO [1], a new module inside the Alya framework [2]. Alya is one of the largest and most advanced computational mechanics codes developed at Barcelona Supercomputing Center. Alya has been applied to many domains thanks to the multi-physics approach and has been developed to solve complex coupled problems such as combustion or cardiovascular system simulation. In our recent journal paper, we have validated NEUTRO and included nuclear data, which brings the code forward and improves it significantly. We are currently working to couple NEUTRO with the various other physics modules available in Alya to solve coupled high fidelity and high demanding computational problem of the first wall for the realization of DEMO.
