The preliminary neutronics analysis for a 10 MW molten salt reactor with solid fuel

Abstract

The 10 MW MSR-SF is a type of Pebble-bed Fluoride-salt-cooled High-temperature Reactors (PB-FHRs) and was designed by the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The CAS planned to construct it around 2020 as the initial step with the expectation of a larger 100 MW PB-FHR. The PB-FHRs are composed of randomly distributed fuel pebbles consisting of randomly distributed TRISO coated particles, which is known as the feature of stochastic double heterogeneity. In this work, an explicit modeling method is adopted to consider the stochastic double heterogeneity and the code Serpent is used to execute the Monte Carlo neutron transport calculation. Moreover, the regular lattice method will introduce non-negligible bias in the neutronics analysis for the PB-FHR, while the exact explicit method can provide more reliable results. Therefore, the accurate three-dimensional power distribution of the 10 MW MSR-SF is obtained with the code Serpent based on the explicit modeling approach. The power peaking factor of the 10 MW MSR-SF is small and reasonable.