Neutronic Design Modification of Passive Compact-Molten Salt Reactor

Abstract

Passive compact molten salt reactor (PCMSR) is a design concept of a molten salt reactor (MSR) currently under development in Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia. It is designed as a thermal breeder reactor using thorium fuel cycle. However, our previous study shows that the original PCMSR design was incorrectly modelled, primarily overestimating its thorium breeding capability. To improve PCMSR neutronic design, we modified the core configuration by the addition of radial fuel channel layers previously nonexistent in original PCMSR core design in various configurations. Neutronic parameters of modified PCMSR geometries in the beginning of life (BOL) were simulated using MCNP6.2 radiation transport code with ENDF/B-VII.0 library. All variations of fuel layer addition show improvement in both temperature coefficient of reactivity (TCR) and breeding ratio (BR), with TCR values became more negative and BR values are larger than unity, ensuring proper breeding capability. Configuration Inner Core-Outer Blanket (IC-OB) achieves the largest BR and lowest doubling time (DT), whilst its TCR is an improvement from the original design. Therefore, IC-OB fuel layer configuration can be applied to redesign the original PCMSR and used in various design optimization scenarios.