Influence of Xe-135 Dynamic Behavior on Core Operation Safety for a Molten Salt Reactor

The isotope Xe-135 has a large thermal neutron absorption cross section and is considered to be the most important fission product. A very small amount of such neutron poison may significantly affect the reactor reactivity since they will absorb the neutrons from chain reaction, therefore monitoring their atomic density variation during reactor operation is extremely important. In a molten reactor system, Xe-135 is entrained in the liquid fuel and continuously circulates through the core where the neutron irradiation functions and the external core where only nuclei decay occurs, at the same time, an off-gas removal system operates for online removing Xe-135 through helium bubbling. These unique features of MSR complicate the Xe-135 dynamic behaviors, and the calculation method applied in the solid fuel reactor system is not suitable. From this point, we firstly analytically deduce the nuclei evolution law of Xe-135 in the flowing salt with an off-gas removal system functioning. A study of Xe-135 dynamic behavior with the core power change, shutdown, helium bubbling failure and startup then is conducted, and several valuable conclusions are obtained for MSR design.