Utilization of Heavy Metal Molten Salts in the ARIES-RS Fusion Reactor

Abstract

ARIES-RS is one of the major magnetic fusion energy reactor designs that uses a blanket having vanadium alloy structure cooled by lithium [1, 2]. It is a deuterium–tritium (DT) fusion driven reactor, having a fusion power of 2170 MW [1, 2]. This study presents the neutronic analysis of the ARIES-RS fusion reactor using heavy metal molten salts in which Li2BeF4 as the main constituent was mixed with increased mole fractions of heavy metal salt (ThF4 or UF4) starting by 2 mol.% up to 12 mol.%. Neutron transport calculations were carried out with the help of the SCALE 4.3 system by solving the Boltzmann transport equation with the XSDRNPM code in 238 neutron groups and a S 8–P 3 approximation. According to the numerical results, tritium self-sufficiency was attained for the coolants, Flibe with 2% UF4 or ThF4 and 4% UF4. In addition, higher energy multiplication values were found for the salt with UF4 compared to that with ThF4. Furthermore, significant amount of high quality nuclear fuel was produced to be used in external reactors.