Fuel Tap: A Simplified Breed and Burn MSR

Abstract

Breed-and-burn Molten Salt Reactors are an interesting option of reactor design that allow high fuel utilization while operating on an open fuel cycle. Such reactors usually require specialized codes in order to model its fuel cycle and the flowing fuel in an unmoderated core. In this work, we propose a design and perform a preliminary analysis of a homogeneous chloride salt single-fluid design. The fuel cycle is analyzed using the EQL0D tool in order to model reactor start-up and transition into an equilibrium state. Core simulation is performed using ATARI, an OpenFOAM-based multiphysics code developed at PSI. Results show that the core size for such a reactor is quite big and that it can be easily started with high-assay LEU. In addition, the core has been designed to promote a quasi-1D flow, opening the possibility of modeling the core with legacy codes in the future.