SAM Enhancements and Model Developments for Molten-Salt-Fueled Reactors

Technical Report · Tue Dec 01 04:00:00 EST 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1763728· OSTI ID:1763728

Fang, Jun ^[1]; Hu, Rui ^[1]; Gorman, Michael ^[1]; Zou, Ling ^[1]; Hu, Guojun ^[1]; Hua, Thanh ^[1]

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1. Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)

To support the development and utilization of the SAM code for molten-salt-fueled reactor (MSR) safety analysis and licensing, an effort was devoted to enhancing code capabilities and developing reference models for the MSR primary loop. A reference standard problem of a prototypical reactor design is foundational to NRC to verify the adequacy of computer codes and evaluation models for a specific reactor type. A thermo-fluid model of the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) has been developed. The MSRE primary loop model consists of a 2-D core region and external core components in 1-D or 0-D. Both the steady-state and a transient scenario are simulated. The porous medium model is utilized for both the molten salt fluid channels and the moderator matrix in the MSRE core. The use of the porous medium model for the MSRE core is verified with the higher-fidelity simulation results using 1-D representations of the fluid channels and 3-D modeling of core structures. To further enhance SAM multi-scale simulation capabilities for MSRs, a mass transport model is developed and implemented in SAM multi-dimension flow module for modeling of species transport such as delayed neutron precursors in MSRs.

• Research Organization: Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-06CH11357
• OSTI ID: 1763728
• Report Number(s): ANL/NSE--20/66; 165062
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
3-D flow
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING
DNP drift
MSRE
SAM
molten salt reactor experiment