Modeling and simulation of online reprocessing in the thorium-fueled molten salt breeder reactor

Abstract

In the search for new ways to generate carbon-free, reliable base-load power, interest in advanced nuclear energy technologies, particularly Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs), has resurged with multiple new companies pursuing MSR commercialization. To further develop these MSR concepts, researchers need simulation tools for analyzing liquid-fueled MSR depletion and fuel processing. However, most contemporary nuclear reactor physics software is unable to perform high-fidelity full-core depletion calculations for a reactor design with online reprocessing. This paper introduces a Python package, SaltProc, which couples with the Monte Carlo code, SERPENT2 to simulate MSR online reprocessing by modeling the changing isotopic composition of MSR fuel salt. This work demonstrates SaltProc capabilities for a full-core, high-fidelity model of the commercial Molten Salt Breeder Reactor (MSBR) concept and verifies these results to results in the literature from independent, lower-fidelity analyses.