Improvement of the delayed neutron precursor transport model in RELAP5 for liquid-fueled molten salt reactor

Abstract

The Liquid-Fueled Molten Salt Reactor (LF-MSR) with high-temperature molten salt is one of the Generation IV nuclear power systems. One of the significant differences between the LF-MSR and the Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) is that the delayed neutron precursors (DNP) circulate in the primary loop of the LF-MSR and leads to different neutron kinetics between LF-MSR and PWR. Consequently, a system code for PWR is not applicable to LF-MSR, and the safety analysis code RELAP5-TMSR is modified by adding a one-dimensional DNP transport model to improve its applicability to LF-MSR. A second-order Godunov method is adopted in this 1-D DNP model. Then the improved code is tested with experimental benchmarks from Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) designed and operated by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the results show good consistency. Moreover, the modified RELAP5-TMSR code is applied to analyzing transient characteristics of the single-fluid Molten Salt Breeding Reactor (MSBR) so that the applicability of the modified RELAP5-TMSR code is further verified. It is concluded that the one-dimensional DNP transport model can describe effectively the movement of the DNP and the improved RELAP5-TMSR code is suitable for modeling and simulation of reactor transient responses in LF-MSR.