Abstract
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.
Highlights
The current Light Water Reactor (LWR) with a once-through and partially closed fuel cycle have the disadvantage of low fuel utilization
Based on previous study of the breed-and-burn molten salt fuel tube design, a 3D pin cell parametric study was conducted to investigate the increase in neutronic performance of the breed-and-burn molten salt reactor (BBMSR)
While breed-and-burn operation was shown to be viable, a realistic core height of 4 meters achieves 77% less neutronic margin compared to the 2D reference case
Summary
The current Light Water Reactor (LWR) with a once-through and partially closed fuel cycle have the disadvantage of low fuel utilization. The conventional pumped fuel molten salt reactor (MSR) potentially offers passively safe and efficient nuclear energy with high fuel utilization and low proliferation risk. This configuration avoids the complex engineering and corrosion issue of pumping actinidebearing molten salt fuel. The breed-and-burn molten salt reactor (BBMSR) design is based on a modified SSR design by using natural uranium fuel salt to achieve breed-and-burn operation [4]. The aim of this work is to increase the neutron excess margin of the BBMSR using metallic natural uranium as a breeding blanket inside the fuel tube design. The results of the neutron excess analysis and parametric studies of the BBMSR fuel tube and blanket design are presented in this paper
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