scholarly journals CORE DESIGN OF BREED & BURN MOLTEN SALT FAST REACTOR

2021 ◽  
Vol 247 ◽  
pp. 01004
Author(s):  
Eduardo Cuoc ◽  
Eugene Shwageraus ◽  
Alisha Kasam ◽  
Ian Scott

Previous designs of once-through solid-fuelled breed-and-burn (B&B) reactor and the conventional molten salt reactor (MSR) concepts suffer from material limitation of neutron irradiation damage and chemical corrosion. A novel breed-and-burn molten salt reactor (BBMSR) concept uses separate molten salt fuel and coolant in a linear assembly core configuration. Similar to Moltex Energy Stable Salt Reactor (SSR) design, the configuration with fuel salt contained in fuel tubes and coolant salt in pool type reactor vessel has been previously studied. The study confirmed that breed-and-burn operation is feasible in principle, however with a low neutronic margin. The objective of this paper was to seek improvements of the neutronic margin with a metallic natural uranium blanket design. A parametric study was performed for the natural uranium blanket design. BBMSR neutronic performance simulation was modelled using Serpent, a Monte Carlo reactor physics code, with a single 3D hexagonal channel containing a single fuel tube in an infinite lattice with reflective radial and vacuum axial boundary conditions. The addition of a metallic natural uranium blanket inside the fuel tube, which increases the natural uranium metal to fuel salt ratio (ϒ) of the BBMSR, was shown to significantly increase the neutronic performance of the BBMSR.

2021 ◽  
Vol 109 (5) ◽  
pp. 357-365
Author(s):  
Zhiqiang Cheng ◽  
Zhongqi Zhao ◽  
Junxia Geng ◽  
Xiaohe Wang ◽  
Jifeng Hu ◽  
...  

Abstract To develop the application of 95Nb as an indicator of redox potential for fuel salt in molten salt reactor (MSR), the specific activity of 95Nb in FLiBe salt and its deposition of 95Nb on Hastelloy C276 have been studied. Experimental results indicated that the amount of 95Nb deposited on Hastelloy C276 resulted from its chemical reduction exhibited a positive correlation with the decrease of 95Nb activity in FLiBe salt and the relative deposition coefficient of 95Nb to 103Ru appeared a well correlation with 95Nb activity in FLiBe salt. Both correlations implied that the measurement of 95Nb activity deposited on Hastelloy C276 specimen might provide a quantitative approach for monitoring the redox potential of fuel salt in MSR.


2018 ◽  
Vol 119 ◽  
pp. 396-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin R. Betzler ◽  
Sean Robertson ◽  
Eva E. Davidson (née Sunny) ◽  
Jeffrey J. Powers ◽  
Andrew Worrall ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Dalin Zhang ◽  
Suizheng Qiu

The Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) is one of the six GENIV systems capable of breading and burning. In this paper, a graphite-moderated channel type MSR was selected for conceptual research. For this MSR, a ternary system of 0.15LiF-0.58NaF-0.27BeF2 was proposed as the reactor fuel solvent, coolant and also moderator simultaneously with ca.1 mol% UF4 dissolving in it, which circulates through the whole primary loop accompanying fission reaction only in the core. 169 hexagonal graphite elements, each with a central fuel channel, are arranged in the core symmetrically by 30° angles. The theoretical models of the thermal hydraulics under steady condition are conducted in one-twelfth of the core and calculated by the numerical method. The DRAGON code is adopted to calculate the axial and radial power factors. The flow and heat transfer models in the fuel salt and graphite are founded basing on the fundamental mass, momentum and energy equations. The calculated results show the detailed mass flow distribution in the core; and the temperature of the fuel salt, inner and outer wall in the calculated elements along the axial direction are also obtained.


Atomic Energy ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 115 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. I. Ponomarev ◽  
M. B. Seregin ◽  
A. P. Parshin ◽  
S. A. Mel’nikov ◽  
A. A. Mikhalichenko ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 247 ◽  
pp. 13003
Author(s):  
Valeria Raffuzzi ◽  
Jiri Krepel

The Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) is one of the most revolutionary Gen-IV reactors and it can be operated, especially with chloride salts, in the so-called breed and burn fuel cycle. In this type of fuel cycle the fissile isotopes from spent fuel do not need to be reprocessed, because the excess bred fuel covers the losses. The liquid phase of the MSR fuel assures its instant homogenization, and the reactor can be operated with batch-wise refueling thus reaching an equilibrium state. At the same time, the active core of the chloride fast MSR needs to be bulky to limit neutron leakage. In this study, the code Serpent 2 was coupled to the Python script BBP to simulate batch-wise operation of the breed and burn MSR fuel cycle. The script, previously developed for solid assemblies shuffling, was modified to simulate fuel homogenization after fertile material addition. Several fuel salts and fission products removal strategies were simulated and their impact was analyzed. Similarly, the influence of blanket volume was assessed in a two-fluid core layout. The results showed that the reactivity initially grows during the irradiation period and later decreases. The blanket has a large impact on the performance and it can be used to further increase the fuel burnup or to shrink the active core size. The breed and burn fuel cycle in MSR can reach high fuel utilization without fuel reprocessing and a multi-fluid layout can help to decrease the core size.


Author(s):  
Chun-yan Zou ◽  
Jin-gen Chen ◽  
Xiang-zhou Cai ◽  
Cheng-gang Yu ◽  
Da-zhen Jiang ◽  
...  

As one of the candidates in the Generation IV reactors program., the molten salt reactor (MSR) has the properties of online refueling and fuel salt reprocessing, MSR is especially attractive for the Thorium fuel cycle, which is very ideal for nuclear non-proliferation, radiotoxicity and nuclear energy sustainability. Therefore, the “Thorium-based Molten Salt Reactor (TMSR) nuclear system” project has been proposed as one of the “Strategic Priority Research Program” of Chinese Academy of Science (CAS). In this paper, we mainly investigated the influence on the breeding ratio and waste radiotoxicity with different reprocessing schemes. By considering the key parameters mentioned above, the aim is to choose an efficient reprocessing scheme for TMSR to reach self-breeding with Th/U fuel cycle and minimize the radioactive waste production of the molten salt.


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