Abstract

Nuclear fusion offers the prospect of pollution and carbon dioxide-free energy to significantly reduce climate change. Recent advances in high temperature superconducting magnets enable significantly higher magnetic fluxes to contain the plasma in which the fusion reaction occurs. Higher magnetic fluxes offer the possibility of a commercially viable fusion reactor with a major radius of 1.85m which could be manufactured economically. The design of such a spherical tokamak is extraordinarily challenging due to the extreme physical conditions of a vacuum vessel containing a 100 million degree centigrade plasma producing a strong neutron flux and surrounded by cryogenically cooled super-conducting magnets. The electrical power supplies need to deliver millions of amps of current. The cooling of the plasma facing components is particularly challenging, analogous to gas turbine blades which operate in a gas flow which is hotter than their melting point. Since a Spherical Tokamak with a positive energy output has yet to be constructed, the only way to design the system is to use numerical simulation to model first the plasma and then to model the behaviour of the engineering systems which confine the plasma, deliver power into the plasma, extract heat from the plasma-facing components and extract waste products. The development of the reactor system begins with a system model in a Model-based Systems Engineering (MBSE) tool. The performance of a system concept is first evaluated using 0D simulation of the reactor system including the behaviour of the plasma. Then 2D and 3D plasma simulations of steady state operation, start up and shut down are carried out to understand the required performance and various physical loads on the reactor systems. Based on the loadings derived from the physics simulations, 3D engineering simulations including CFD, structural, thermal electromagnetic and neutronics FEA are then carried out to size the engineering systems and components. In order to manage the system design, the evaluation and maturation of concepts with hundreds of design parameters based on multi-fidelity simulations, an information system managing requirements, MBSE and simulations is needed. Such an information system combining the management MBSE models, 0D simulations based on MBSE system models and 3D simulations using classic SPDM techniques was beyond the state of the art in 2020. This paper describes how an information system to manage spherical tokamak evaluation was architected, designed and Proof of Concepts build on an agile, open PLM platform.