scholarly journals Molten Salt Reactors

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Dolan
Keyword(s):  
Molten Salt ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Liquid Fuel ◽  
Fission Products ◽  
Processing Plant ◽  
Fast Reactors ◽  
Melting Temperatures ◽  
Load Following ◽  
Reactor Types ◽  
Reactor Accidents

<p><br></p> <div> <table> <tr> <td> <p>Molten Salt Reactors</p> </td> </tr> </table> </div> <br> <div> <table> <tr> <td> <p>© Thomas J. Dolan, Member, IEEE 2021</p> </td> </tr> </table> </div> <br> <p><i>Abstract</i>— Nuclear power is advancing slowly because of public concerns about nuclear accidents, radioactive waste, fuel supply, cost, and nuclear proliferation. The development of molten salt reactors could alleviate most of these concerns and prevent water-cooled reactor accidents like those at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. The purpose of this article is to provide information about the potential advantages and problems of molten salt reactors. The coolants could be either <i>fluorides</i> or <i>chlorides</i>, operated above their melting temperatures, to avoid solidification, and well below their boiling temperatures, to prevent evaporation losses. “Fast” reactors use energetic fission neutrons, while “thermal” reactors use graphite to slow the neutrons down to thermal energies. We describe four reactor types: solid fuel thermal, liquid fuel thermal, liquid fuel fast, and “stable salt” fast reactors (liquid fuel in tubes). We discuss load following, reactor design projects, and development problems. Liquid fuel reactors will require a chemical processing plant to adjust fissile fuel inventory, fission products, actinides, and corrosivity in a hot, highly-radioactive environment. </p>

scholarly journals Molten Salt Reactors

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Dolan
Keyword(s):  
Molten Salt ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Liquid Fuel ◽  
Fission Products ◽  
Processing Plant ◽  
Fast Reactors ◽  
Melting Temperatures ◽  
Load Following ◽  
Reactor Types ◽  
Reactor Accidents

<p><br></p> <div> <table> <tr> <td> <p>Molten Salt Reactors</p> </td> </tr> </table> </div> <br> <div> <table> <tr> <td> <p>© Thomas J. Dolan, Member, IEEE 2021</p> </td> </tr> </table> </div> <br> <p><i>Abstract</i>— Nuclear power is advancing slowly because of public concerns about nuclear accidents, radioactive waste, fuel supply, cost, and nuclear proliferation. The development of molten salt reactors could alleviate most of these concerns and prevent water-cooled reactor accidents like those at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. The purpose of this article is to provide information about the potential advantages and problems of molten salt reactors. The coolants could be either <i>fluorides</i> or <i>chlorides</i>, operated above their melting temperatures, to avoid solidification, and well below their boiling temperatures, to prevent evaporation losses. “Fast” reactors use energetic fission neutrons, while “thermal” reactors use graphite to slow the neutrons down to thermal energies. We describe four reactor types: solid fuel thermal, liquid fuel thermal, liquid fuel fast, and “stable salt” fast reactors (liquid fuel in tubes). We discuss load following, reactor design projects, and development problems. Liquid fuel reactors will require a chemical processing plant to adjust fissile fuel inventory, fission products, actinides, and corrosivity in a hot, highly-radioactive environment. </p>

Electrochemical decontamination of irradiated nuclear graphite from corrosion and fission products using molten salt

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatiana Grebennikova ◽  
Abbie N Jones ◽  
Clint Alan Sharrad
Keyword(s):  
Power Plant ◽  
Nuclear Power Plant ◽  
Waste Management ◽  
Molten Salt ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Fission Products ◽  
Nuclear Graphite ◽  
Irradiated Graphite ◽  
The World ◽  
The Uk

Irradiated graphite waste management is one of the major challenges of nuclear power-plant decommissioning throughout the world and significantly in the UK, France and Russia where over 85 reactors employed...

scholarly journals An Eulerian Single-Phase Transport Model for Solid Fission Products in the Molten Salt Fast Reactor: Development of an Analytical Solution for Verification Purposes

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Di Ronco ◽  
Stefano Lorenzi ◽  
Francesca Giacobbo ◽  
Antonio Cammi
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Conditions ◽  
Molten Salt ◽  
Fast Reactor ◽  
Liquid Fuel ◽  
Mixed Type ◽  
Single Phase ◽  
Transport Model ◽  
Reactor Core ◽  
Fission Products ◽  
Phase Transport

Nuclear reactor modeling has been shifting, over the last decades, towards full-core multiphysics analysis due to the ever-increasing safety requirements and complexity of the designs of innovative systems. This is particularly true for liquid-fuel reactor concepts such as the Molten Salt Fast Reactor (MSFR), given their strong intrinsic coupling between thermal-hydraulics, neutronics and fuel chemistry. In the MSFR, fission products (FPs) are originated within the liquid fuel and are carried by the fuel flow all over the reactor core and through pumping and heat exchange systems. Some of FP species, in the form of solid precipitates, can represent a major design and safety challenge, e.g., due to deposition on solid boundaries, and their distribution in the core is relevant to the design and safety analysis of the reactor. In this regard it is essential, both for the design and the safety assessment of the reactor, the capability to model the transport of solid FPs and their deposition to the boundary (e.g., wall or heat exchanger structures). To this aim, in this study, models of transport of solid FPs in the MSFR are developed and verified. An Eulerian single-phase transport model is developed and integrated in a consolidated multiphysics model of the MSFR based on the open-source CFD library OpenFOAM. In particular, general mixed-type deposition boundary conditions are considered, to possibly describe different kinds of particle-wall interaction mechanisms. For verification purposes, analytical solutions for simple case studies are derived ad hoc based on the extension of the classic Graetz problem to linear decay, distributed source terms and mixed-type boundary conditions. The results show excellent agreement between the two models, and highlight the effects of decay and deposition phenomena of various intensity. The resulting approach constitutes a computationally efficient tool to extend the capabilities of CFD-based multiphysics MSFR calculations towards the simulation of solid fission products transport.

scholarly journals Molten Salt Reactors

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Dolan
Keyword(s):  
Radioactive Waste ◽  
Molten Salt ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Nuclear Proliferation ◽  
Nuclear Accidents ◽  
Fuel Supply ◽  
Reactor Accidents ◽  
Public Concerns

Nuclear power is advancing slowly because of public concerns about nuclear accidents, radioactive waste, fuel supply, cost, and nuclear proliferation. The development of molten salt reactors could alleviate most of these concerns and prevent water-cooled reactor accidents like those at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. The purpose of this article is to provide information about the potential advantages and problems of molten salt reactors.

Modeling of Steam Explosion in Partially Flooded PWR Reactor Cavity

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bosˇtjan Koncˇar ◽  
Matjazˇ Leskovar ◽  
Leon Cizelj
Keyword(s):  
Steam Explosion ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Nuclear Reactor ◽  
Fission Products ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Pressurized Water Reactor ◽  
Pressurized Water ◽  
Fit For Purpose ◽  
Computational Fluid Dynamics Cfd ◽  
Reactor Accidents

When the hot molten core comes into contact with the water in the reactor cavity a steam explosion can occur. The steam explosion might be triggered during some scenarios of severe nuclear reactor accidents, when extremely hot molten nuclear fuel interacts with the coolant water. A highly energetic steam explosion in a nuclear power plant could cause the containment failure and the release of radioactive fission products to the environment. The purpose of the performed analysis is to provide a first estimation of the expected pressure loadings on the typical PWR cavity structures during a steam explosion. To achieve this, the fit-for-purpose steam explosion model is proposed, followed by a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis. In the present work two steam explosion scenarios in the partially flooded Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) cavity were simulated with the general purpose code CFX-5 [1] to estimate pressure loadings on cavity walls.

scholarly journals Too Good to Leave on the Shelf

2010 ◽  
Vol 132 (05) ◽  
pp. 29-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
David LeBlanc
Keyword(s):  
Molten Salt ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Negative Temperature ◽  
Pressure Vessels ◽  
Molten Salt Reactor ◽  
Light Water Reactors ◽  
Load Following ◽  
Fuel Pellets ◽  
Water Reactors ◽  
Large Effort

This article explores the use of molten salt reactors (MSR) as a source of cheap and limitless energy for nuclear power industry. Molten salt reactors contain no fuel pellets. MSRs run at near-atmospheric pressure, so the thick-walled pressure vessels found in light-water reactors are unnecessary. Since there is no water or sodium in the reactor fluids, there is zero possibility of a steam explosion or hydrogen production within the containment. The article also highlights advantages of using MSRs in nuclear-powered bombers. Many of the drawbacks to the molten salt reactor approach have been worked out. MSR designs have very strong negative temperature and void coefficients, which act instantly, aiding safety and allowing automatic load following operation. The Molten Salt Reactor Experiment showed that maintenance and repair could be carried out smoothly and that reactor control was highly stable. The article concludes that molten salt or liquid fluoride reactors will also take a large effort, but every indication points to a power reactor that will excel in cost, safety, long-term waste reduction, resource utilization, and proliferation resistance.

scholarly journals Converting Maturing Nuclear Sites to Integrated Power Production Islands

2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Charles W. Solbrig
Keyword(s):  
Fast Reactor ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Fission Products ◽  
Power Production ◽  
Spent Fuel ◽  
Fast Reactors ◽  
The Us ◽  
Spent Fuel Pool ◽  
Fuel Reprocessing ◽  
Nuclear Power Production

Nuclear islands, which are integrated power production sites, could effectively sequester and safeguard the US stockpile of plutonium. A nuclear island, an evolution of the integral fast reactor, utilizes all the Transuranics (Pu plus minor actinides) produced in power production, and it eliminates all spent fuel shipments to and from the site. This latter attribute requires that fuel reprocessing occur on each site and that fast reactors be built on-site to utilize the TRU. All commercial spent fuel shipments could be eliminated by converting all LWR nuclear power sites to nuclear islands. Existing LWR sites have the added advantage of already possessing a license to produce nuclear power. Each could contribute to an increase in the nuclear power production by adding one or more fast reactors. Both the TRU and the depleted uranium obtained in reprocessing would be used on-site for fast fuel manufacture. Only fission products would be shipped to a repository for storage. The nuclear island concept could be used to alleviate the strain of LWR plant sites currently approaching or exceeding their spent fuel pool storage capacity. Fast reactor breeding ratio could be designed to convert existing sites to all fast reactors, or keep the majority thermal.

scholarly journals Pyrochemical reprocessing of molten salt fast reactor fuel: focus on the reductive extraction step

Nukleonika ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 907-914 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davide Rodrigues ◽  
Gabriela Durán-Klie ◽  
Sylvie Delpech
Keyword(s):  
Molten Salt ◽  
Fast Reactor ◽  
Liquid Fuel ◽  
Noble Metals ◽  
Fission Products ◽  
Selective Extraction ◽  
Fissile Material ◽  
Metallic Lithium ◽  
Fuel Salt ◽  
Static Conditions

Abstract The nuclear fuel reprocessing is a prerequisite for nuclear energy to be a clean and sustainable energy. In the case of the molten salt reactor containing a liquid fuel, pyrometallurgical way is an obvious way. The method for treatment of the liquid fuel is divided into two parts. In-situ injection of helium gas into the fuel leads to extract the gaseous fission products and a part of the noble metals. The second part of the reprocessing is performed by ‘batch’. It aims to recover the fissile material and to separate the minor actinides from fission products. The reprocessing involves several chemical steps based on redox and acido-basic properties of the various elements contained in the fuel salt. One challenge is to perform a selective extraction of actinides and lanthanides in spent liquid fuel. Extraction of actinides and lanthanides are successively performed by a reductive extraction in liquid bismuth pool containing metallic lithium as a reductive reagent. The objective of this paper is to give a description of the several steps of the reprocessing retained for the molten salt fast reactor (MSFR) concept and to present the initial results obtained for the reductive extraction experiments realized in static conditions by contacting LiF-ThF4-UF4-NdF3 with a lab-made Bi-Li pool and for which extraction efficiencies of 0.7% for neodymium and 14.0% for uranium were measured. It was concluded that in static conditions, the extraction is governed by a kinetic limitation and not by the thermodynamic equilibrium.

scholarly journals Molten Salt Reactors

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Dolan
Keyword(s):  
Radioactive Waste ◽  
Molten Salt ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Nuclear Proliferation ◽  
Nuclear Accidents ◽  
Fuel Supply ◽  
Reactor Accidents ◽  
Public Concerns

Nuclear power is advancing slowly because of public concerns about nuclear accidents, radioactive waste, fuel supply, cost, and nuclear proliferation. The development of molten salt reactors could alleviate most of these concerns and prevent water-cooled reactor accidents like those at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. The purpose of this article is to provide information about the potential advantages and problems of molten salt reactors.

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