Successful deployment of fusion power plants relies on our ability to accurately predict the effects of high energy neutrons after they leave the plasma. The neutron flux distribution in a fusion reactor has many different qualities from the distribution in a fission reactor, which necessitates different modeling techniques and places emphasis on different analyses that have less mature workflows. For example, fusion reactor geometries are typically much more complicated than fission reactors, resulting in a CAE-first approach to fusion neutronics. To enable high-fidelity modeling of fusion engineering systems, we develop open-source methods and workflows with OpenMC for fusion reactor design, tritium breeding experiments, and interpreting diagnostics.
The process of validating results from radiation transport simulations for fusion technology applications is critical for ensuring safe and robust operation of fusion power plants. Whereas the fission reactor community has a long history of rigorous benchmarking for criticality safety, the fusion community has far fewer experiments to support the many nuclear analyses necessary to design a fusion power plant. To improve the first principles justification for the design and licensing of fusion power plants, we develop and execute computational and experimental benchmarks for fusion neutronics simulations with a focus on transparency and commitment to open source tools and benchmarks.