Preliminary design and analysis of Liquid Fuel Molten Salt Reactor using multi-physics code GeN-Foam

Altahhan, Muhammad Ramzy; Bhaskar, Sandesh; Ziyad, Devshibhai; Balestra, Paolo; Fiorina, Carlo; Hou, Jason; Smith, Nicholas; Avramova, Maria

doi:10.1016/j.nucengdes.2020.110826

Cited by 13 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…A high-fidelity turbulence model, such as the large eddy simulation (LES) present in Nek5000, can help accurately predict where these zones may occur. An additional issue for MSRs with unrestricted flow is the need to track delayed neutron precursors [55]. These are the fission products that release neutrons through radioactive decay a few seconds or minutes after the initial fission reaction rather than immediately through the fission reaction like prompt neutrons.…”

Section: Computational Fluid Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Application of NEAMS Codes to Capture MSR Phenomena

Bao¹,

Shahbazi²,

Fang³

et al. 2021

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Section: Computational Fluid Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Application of NEAMS Codes to Capture MSR Phenomena

Bao¹,

Shahbazi²,

Fang³

et al. 2021

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“…However, currently proposed LFMSR cores consist of a singular flow channel, where complex fuel salt flow patterns can play an important role depending on the core geometry. [6][7][8][9] Therefore, it is vital to couple the thermal-hydraulic influences on neutronics fields using higher-fidelity tools.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[14][15][16] Transient simulations of LFMSRs using those multiphysics tools have been focused on the core domain only to assess whether such a design meets the safety criteria from maximum temperature of the fuel salt. 8,17 Recent LFMSR designs targeting near-term deployment adopt chloride-based salt because of its advantages in the economic utilization of the fissile materials 18 and cost-effective fuel fabrication using techniques like pyroprocessing. 8 Molten chloride salts are known to corrode metal alloys at elevated temperatures, 19 and flow and thermal conditions must be evaluated for structural longevity calculations in commercial applications.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…8,17 Recent LFMSR designs targeting near-term deployment adopt chloride-based salt because of its advantages in the economic utilization of the fissile materials 18 and cost-effective fuel fabrication using techniques like pyroprocessing. 8 Molten chloride salts are known to corrode metal alloys at elevated temperatures, 19 and flow and thermal conditions must be evaluated for structural longevity calculations in commercial applications. 20 For I&C considerations, local temperatures and mechanical loads in core structures are of interest.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Informing Performance Metrics of Advanced I&C Systems for Liquid Fueled Fast Molten Salt Reactors

Jeong

Shirvan

Buric

2022

Nuclear Science and Engineering

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This work establishes a generic multiphysics tool for liquid-fueled molten salt reactors (LFMSRs) to select key installation locations and specify the expected operating temperature range for the development of advanced instrumentation and control systems, particularly distributed temperature sensors using fiber optics. A commercial computation fluid dynamics package (STAR-CCM+) is used to formulate a neutronics and thermal-hydraulic coupled solver, showing good agreement with a recent benchmark problem developed for evaluating the coupling methodology of neutronics and thermal hydraulics. The multiphysics model is then applied to the reference molten chloride salt fast reactor (MCFR) design under development by TerraPower based on publicly available information. The available twodimensional axisymmetric model for the reactor core is used for coupling calculations, and system component details are leveraged using the lumped method to complete the energy balance. The dynamic responses of the MCFR model are investigated during operational transients, such as unprotected loss-offlow and uniform perturbation scenarios. Maximum temperature and local temperature distributions are characterized during unprotected loss of flow and unprotected loss of heat sink events. The thermal responses of the fuel salt and core components are analyzed from induced perturbation of the system parameters, such as the flow rate and the heat sink capacity. The results motivate the use of continuous monitoring of the temperature variation in real time along the reflector region with the use of fiber optics to validate the multiphysics code to support a reactor's licensing basis, as well as to support the structural longevity and improve safety in LFMSRs.

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“…A plethora of new designs have been proposed, with a wide variety of configurations and physical attributes, e.g., neutron spectra, coolants, moderators, and relevant feedback mechanisms. The novel designs include: pebble bed reactors (PBRs) both of the hightemperature gas-cooled (HTGR) and fluoride-salt-cooled varieties, [2,3], prismatic HTGRs with hexagonal unit cells and cylindrical fuel slugs [4], micro-reactors (MRs) with annular fuel in hexagonal unit cells [5], hexagonal assembly fast [6], and mixed spectrum reactors [7], hexagonal [8,9], and plate fuel [10], nuclear thermal propulsion systems, and thermal [11], and fast open-pool type liquid fuel molten salt reactors (MSRs) [12,13]. The diversity of the reactor Gen-IV designs, necessitates modeling and simulation (M&S) software that permits flexible multi-physics capabilities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of a Single-Phase, Transient, Subchannel Code, within the MOOSE Multi-Physics Computational Framework

2022

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Subchannel codes have been widely used for thermal-hydraulics analyses in nuclear reactors. This paper details the development of a novel subchannel code within the Idaho National Laboratory’s (INL) Multi-physics Object Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE). MOOSE is a parallel computational framework targeted at the solution of systems of coupled, nonlinear partial differential equations, that often arise in the simulation of nuclear processes. As such, it includes codes/modules able to solve the multiple linear and nonlinear physics that describe a nuclear reactor, under normal operation conditions or accidents. This includes thermal-hydraulics, fuel performance, and neutronics codes, between others. A MOOSE-based subchannel code is a new addition to the fleet of INL-developed codes, based on the MOOSE framework. In this work, we present the derivation of the subchannel equations for a single-phase fluid, we proceed with the description of the algorithm that is used to solve these equations and describe how this algorithm was implemented within MOOSE. We also present how this code can be coupled to the BISON fuel performance code. Next, we verify the friction model and the turbulent mixing model. We calibrate the turbulent modeling parameters for momentum mixing and enthalpy mixing, CT,β. We validate the code using experimental results and last demonstrate the coupling capabilities using a simple example.

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Preliminary design and analysis of Liquid Fuel Molten Salt Reactor using multi-physics code GeN-Foam

Cited by 13 publications

References 30 publications

Application of NEAMS Codes to Capture MSR Phenomena

Application of NEAMS Codes to Capture MSR Phenomena

Informing Performance Metrics of Advanced I&C Systems for Liquid Fueled Fast Molten Salt Reactors

Development of a Single-Phase, Transient, Subchannel Code, within the MOOSE Multi-Physics Computational Framework

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