Molten Salt Reactor Fuel and Coolant

This chapter is dedicated to the fuels and coolants of the molten salt reactor whichvbelongs to the one of the six nuclear reactor concepts considered in the Generation IV initiative. The chapter is divided into eight different sections starting with introduction section (Section 1) where the general characteristic of the molten salt reactor is described, followed by the report (Section 2) about the historical develop ments of this reactor concept with the main emphasis on the work performed in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1960's and 1970's. Section 3 briefly shows the current molten salt reactor concepts and their applications as either breeder designs or actinide burner concepts for management of the long lived actinides. Section 4 summarizes the physico-chemical properties of typical fuel and coolant choices based on the critical evaluation of available experimental data of the uoride systems. This part is divided into several subsections according to the properties discussed, first briefly describing the structure of the uoride liquids, followed by the description of various phase diagrams. Furthermore the solubility of actinide uorides in the fuel matrix is given as well as the information about the density, viscosity, heat capacity, thermal conductivity and the vapour pressure. One of the key issues is the understanding of the fuel behaviour under irradiating conditions. This will be briefly discussed in Section 7. Section 8 is related to the fission products and its behaviour in the uoride fuel matrix with respect to its solubility and Section 9 will address the corrosion aspects of the fuel salt on the structural materials.

BENES Ondrej;  KONINGS Rudy; 

2013-10-07

Elsevier

JRC64248

978-0-08-056027-4,   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC64248,