Development and Verification of Dynamics Code for Molten Salt Reactors

Abstract

To perform transient analysis for Molten Salt Reactors (MSR), the reactor dynamics code DYN3D developed in FZR was modified for MSR applications. The MSR as a liquid fuel system can serve as a thorium breeder and also as an actinide burner. The specifics of the reactor dynamics of MSR consist in the fact, that there is direct influence of the fuel velocity to the reactivity, which is caused by the delayed neutrons precursors drift. This drift causes the spread of delayed neutrons distribution to the non-core parts of primary circuit. This leads to a reactivity loss due to the fuel flow acceleration or to the reactivity increase in the case of deceleration. For the first analyses, a 1D modified version DYN1D-MSR of the code has been developed. By means of the DYN1D-MSR, several transients typical for the liquid fuel system were analyzed. Transients due to the overcooling of fuel at the core inlet, due to the reactivity insertion, and the fuel pump trip have been considered. The results of all transient studies have shown that the dynamic behavior of MSR is stable when the coefficients of thermal feedback are negative. For studying space-dependent effects like e.g. local blockages of fuel channels, a 3D code version DYN3D-MSR will be developed. The nodal expansion method used in DYN3D for hexagonal fuel element geometry of VVER can be applied considering MSR design with hexagonal graphite channels.