Study on the tritium behaviors in the VHTR system. Part 1. Development of tritium analysis code for VHTR and verification

A tritium permeation analyses code (TPAC) has been developed at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) by using MATLAB SIMULINK package for analysis of tritium behaviors in the VHTR integrated with hydrogen production and process heat application systems. The modeling is based on the mass balance of tritium-containing species and hydrogen (i.e., HT, H₂, HTO, HTSO₄, and TI) coupled with a variety of tritium source, sink, and permeation models. The code includes: (1) tritium sources from ternary fission and neutron reactions with ⁶Li, ⁷Li ¹⁰B, and ³He; (2) tritium purification system; (3) leakage of tritium with coolant; (4) permeation through pipes, vessels, and heat exchangers; (5) electrolyzer for high temperature steam electrolysis (HTSE); and (6) isotope exchange for SI process. Verification of the code has been performed by comparisons with the analytical solutions, the experimental data, and the benchmark code results based on the Peach Bottom reactor design. The results showed that all the governing equations are well implemented into the code and correctly solved. This paper summarizes all the background, the theory, the code structures, and some verification results related to the TPAC code development at INL.