Numerical Investigation of Safety System Parameters in Molten Salt Reactor: Wall Effect on Freeze Valve Opening Time
Abstract Molten Salt Reactor (MSRs) is one of the fourth generation Nuclear Power Plants with better capabilities and potentialities compared to previous generation, the enthusiasm for molten fuel reactor has been increasing around the world. MSRs has passive safety where if the core is overheating cause by accident event, the liquid salt fuel was required to be moved to the safety drain tank underneath the core vessel by gravity force. During this occasion, the freeze valve (FV) that formed in the pipe located between the core and drain tank must be melt out promptly to prevent the vessel to reach it is melting point. In this paper, we conduct on thermal analysis of the freeze valve at the solidification and melting process based on finite elements methods. The enthalpy-porosity method adopted by ANSYS Fluent was used to simulated the designed system at specified condition. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory of Molten Salt Reactor Experiment Freeze valve system was used as a references for parameters investigation. Using pipe wall thickness of 5 mm, 10 mm, and 15 mm to examined the wall effect to thermal properties of the designed freeze valve. The wall pipe for FV systems material was also investigate in order to examine its effect to the opening time. Further, the temperature distributions of the valve system were obtained and analyzed. It was found that the wall effect has significant impact to the solidification and melting process.