The Interplay between Breeding and Thermal Feedback in a Molten Chlorine Fast Reactor

Merk, Bruno; Detkina, Anna; Litskevich, Dzianis; Atkinson, Seddon; Cartland-Glover, Gregory

doi:10.3390/en13071609

Cited by 14 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 11 publications

(20 reference statements)

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“…The base configuration is NaCl-UCl 3 -UCl 4 with the eutectic composition of 45% (molar) NaCl-38.5% (molar) UCl 4 -16.5% (molar) UCl 3 . It is worthy of further detailed investigation due to its relatively high loading of fertile heavy metal material at the eutectic point, which makes it a very promising composition for achieving the required breeding efficiency essential for future self-sustained breeding [31]. Thus, it is an ideal candidate to be used for a first investigation of the fission product accumulation and its effect on criticality when reaching a significant burnup to identify elements for a potential future element-based clean-up system.…”

Section: Simulation Codes and Methods And Salt Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Defining the Challenges—Identifying the Key Poisoning Elements to Be Separated in a Future Integrated Molten Salt Fast Reactor Clean-Up System for iMAGINE

et al. 2022

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Nuclear fission technologies have the potential to play a significant role in the energy mix of a net-zero and sustainable society. However, to achieve the sustainability goal two significant challenges remain: efficient and sustainable fuel usage and the minimization of long-term nuclear waste. Civil nuclear molten salt systems and technologies offer the opportunity to address both, delivering future reactors at scale for efficient and effective power production and nuclear waste burnup. Potentially, both objectives could be fulfilled in one reactor system, which could significantly improve sustainability indices. The key to this innovation is demand driven development of a significantly reduced fuel cycle with enhanced proliferation resistance which offers further potential for improvement. To achieve these goals, a transformative approach for salt clean-up during molten salt reactor operation is proposed, by concentrating on the detection and removal of key neutron poisoning elements which prevent the reactor from long-term operation. To enable this highly innovative development work, a novel analysis of the evolving elementary fuel composition, their concentrations, and their criticality influence is now provided in this work. This, combined with consideration of the oxidation states of each of these elements then provides the basis for the selection of these key poisons and the development of advanced separation processes and process monitoring. This work also discusses the importance of the effective integration of physics and chemistry when systems modelling in achieving these system development goals.

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Section: Simulation Codes and Methods And Salt Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Defining the Challenges—Identifying the Key Poisoning Elements to Be Separated in a Future Integrated Molten Salt Fast Reactor Clean-Up System for iMAGINE

et al. 2022

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“…As well as being important to get a reliable estimation of the effect each fission product element has on criticality, it is also required to get insight into the likely concentrations of fission products as a basis for the design of a future separation (cleanup) system. The analysis is based on the standard case of [26], with a system radius of 213 cm, a target burnup of 100 GWd/tHM, an initial U-235 enrichment of 11.78 at% which has been found in an iterative approach. The system size was iterated in a multi-stage approach.…”

Section: Modelling and Simulation Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The model for this investigation, see Figure 2, is based on and developed from two recent publications [19,26]. It has been developed for the evaluation of the burnup and breeding performance in a molten salt reactor as well as for the study of potential reactor control through temperature feedback.…”

Section: Simulation Codes and Methods And Salt Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Defining the Challenges - Identifying the Key Poisoning Elements to be Separated in a Future Integrated Molten Salt Fast Reactor Clean-up System for iMAGINE

Merk¹,

Detkina²,

Litskevich³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Nuclear fission technologies have the potential to play a significant role in the energy mix of a net-zero and sustainable society. However, to achieve the sustainability goal two significant challenges remain: efficient and sustainable fuel usage and the minimisation of long term nuclear waste. Civil nuclear molten salt systems and technologies offer the opportunity to address both, delivering future reactors at scale for efficient and effective power production and nuclear waste burnup. Potentially, both objectives could be fulfilled in one reactor system, which could significantly improve sustainability indices. In addition, demand driven development of a significantly reduced fuel cycle with enhanced proliferation resistance offers further potential for improvement. To achieve these goals, a transformative approach for salt clean-up during molten salt reactor operation is proposed in this work, by concentrating on the detection and removal of key neutron poisoning elements which prevent the reactor from long-term operation. This work also demonstrates the importance of the effective integration of physics, reactor design and chemistry when systems modelling in achieving these system development goals.

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“…Based on the given salt system investigation [15], the applied standard salt composition for the study for the nominal case is the eutectic 42.5% NaCl-40.5% UCl 4 -17% UCl 3 . This composition is close enough to the third row of Table 1 to provide a reasonable density estimation.…”

Section: Codes and General Modellingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The general choice for the NaCl-UCl salt system has already been investigated in earlier works [15,16]. The major point for this decision is on the good potential for breeding (high heavy metal loading in the eutectic), which is required for the envisaged long-term self-sustained operation based on spent nuclear fuel, which is the core of the iMAGINE technology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Dimensions Required for a Molten Salt Zero Power Reactor Operating on Chloride Salts

et al. 2021

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Molten salt reactors have gained substantial interest in the last years due to their flexibility and their potential for simplified closed fuel cycle operation for massive expansion in low-carbon electricity production, which will be required for a future net-zero society. The importance of a zero-power reactor for the process of developing a new, innovative rector concept, such as that required for the molten salt fast reactor based on iMAGINE technology, which operates directly on spent nuclear fuel, is described here. It is based on historical developments as well as the current demand for experimental results and key factors that are relevant to the success of the next step in the development process of all innovative reactor types. In the systematic modelling and simulation of a zero-power molten salt reactor, the radius and the feedback effects are studied for a eutectic based system, while a heavy metal rich chloride-based system are studied depending on the uranium enrichment accompanied with the effects on neutron flux spectrum and spatial distribution. These results are used to support the relevant decision for the narrowing down of the configurations supported by considerations on cost and proliferation for the follow up 3-D analysis. The results provide for the first time a systematic modelling and simulation approach for a new reactor physics experiment for an advanced technology. The expected core volumes for these configurations have been studied using multi-group and continuous energy Monte-Carlo simulations identifying the 35% enriched systems as the most attractive. This finally leads to the choice of heavy metal rich compositions with 35% enrichment as the reference system for future studies of the next steps in the zero power reactor investigation. An alternative could be the eutectic system in the case the increased core diameter is manageable. The inter-comparison of the different applied codes and approaches available in the SCALE package has delivered a very good agreement between the results, creating trust into the developed and used models and methods.

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The Interplay between Breeding and Thermal Feedback in a Molten Chlorine Fast Reactor

Cited by 14 publications

References 11 publications

Defining the Challenges—Identifying the Key Poisoning Elements to Be Separated in a Future Integrated Molten Salt Fast Reactor Clean-Up System for iMAGINE

Defining the Challenges—Identifying the Key Poisoning Elements to Be Separated in a Future Integrated Molten Salt Fast Reactor Clean-Up System for iMAGINE

Defining the Challenges - Identifying the Key Poisoning Elements to be Separated in a Future Integrated Molten Salt Fast Reactor Clean-up System for iMAGINE

On the Dimensions Required for a Molten Salt Zero Power Reactor Operating on Chloride Salts

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