TY - GEN
T1 - Fuel cycle performance of fast spectrum molten salt reactor designs
AU - Rykhlevskii, Andrei
AU - Betzler, Benjamin R.
AU - Worrall, Andrew
AU - Huff, Kathryn
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 American Nuclear Society. All rights reserved.
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - In the search for new ways to generate low-carbon, reliable base-load power, a resurgence of interest in advanced nuclear energy technologies, including Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs), has produced multiple new conceptual MSRs including fast neutron spectrum designs. The fuel cycle performance of four historical fast MSR designs is analyzed using a recently developed SCALE/TRITON 6.2.4 Alpha with a continuous online reprocessing functionality. The fast spectrum and continuous feed and removal of material enable these concepts to have remarkable fuel cycle metrics: (1) resource utilization is approximately 18 times better than for a typical low-enriched thermal spectrum once-through fuel cycle (i.e., from approximately 180 t/GWe-year to 1 t/GWe-year); (2) fast MSRs generate approximately 25 times less nuclear waste than the current once-through fuel cycle. These metrics are consistent with the Evaluation and Screening Study [1], which produced a technology-agnostic quantification of the characteristic performance of alternate fuel cycles. Additionally, full-core and unit cell transport models were created and compared to verify the viability of using simplified unit cell geometries for long-term depletion simulation. The unit cell approximation provided a speedup of 20 times relative to the full-core simulation, with depleted mass relative error for major isotopes of less than 2%. Additional fast MSRs design and analysis challenges associated with different fuel cycles and the use of MSR technology are addressed and discussed.
AB - In the search for new ways to generate low-carbon, reliable base-load power, a resurgence of interest in advanced nuclear energy technologies, including Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs), has produced multiple new conceptual MSRs including fast neutron spectrum designs. The fuel cycle performance of four historical fast MSR designs is analyzed using a recently developed SCALE/TRITON 6.2.4 Alpha with a continuous online reprocessing functionality. The fast spectrum and continuous feed and removal of material enable these concepts to have remarkable fuel cycle metrics: (1) resource utilization is approximately 18 times better than for a typical low-enriched thermal spectrum once-through fuel cycle (i.e., from approximately 180 t/GWe-year to 1 t/GWe-year); (2) fast MSRs generate approximately 25 times less nuclear waste than the current once-through fuel cycle. These metrics are consistent with the Evaluation and Screening Study [1], which produced a technology-agnostic quantification of the characteristic performance of alternate fuel cycles. Additionally, full-core and unit cell transport models were created and compared to verify the viability of using simplified unit cell geometries for long-term depletion simulation. The unit cell approximation provided a speedup of 20 times relative to the full-core simulation, with depleted mass relative error for major isotopes of less than 2%. Additional fast MSRs design and analysis challenges associated with different fuel cycles and the use of MSR technology are addressed and discussed.
KW - Depletion
KW - Fast reactor
KW - Fuel cycle
KW - Molten salt reactor
KW - Salt separations
KW - Salt treatment
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M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85075344445
T3 - International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering, M and C 2019
SP - 342
EP - 353
BT - International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering, M and C 2019
PB - American Nuclear Society
T2 - 2019 International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering, M and C 2019
Y2 - 25 August 2019 through 29 August 2019
ER -