A Systems Processing Model for Molten Salt Reactors

Abstract

The chemistry group within the U.S. Department of Energy Molten Salt Reactor Campaign is developing a model for the molten salt reactor system for assessing the suitability of various used fuel processing schemes. In the long run, the developed model is expected to be a tool for better understanding the interplay between the components of the molten salt reactor system including uranium resources, the molten salt reactor, the used fuel processor (e.g., reprocessing plant), and waste management. In this regard, the report proposes a theoretical framework for integrating the various components of the molten salt reactor system. Rather than being buried in implementation details for seemingly heterogeneous components of the reactor system asking for various modeling techniques, this report proposes to approximate and integrate all components with a unified mathematical framework, a discrete-time linear system. An abstracted molten salt reactor system is given as an example to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed theoretical framework. A fully developed molten salt reactor system model (based on the proposed framework) is expected to be beneficial for various objectives including the transient and equilibrium analysis of fuel cycle scenarios and the identification of potential technology bottlenecks.