Neutronic analysis on molten salt reactor FUJI-12 using 235U as fissile material in LiF-BeF2-UF4 fuel
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15587/1729-4061.2022.265798Keywords:
molten salt reactor, OpenMC, uranium fluoride, thorium fluoride, neutron fluxAbstract
Neutronic analysis on the Molten Salt Reactor FUJI-12 using the fissile material 235U in LiF-BeF2-UF4 has been carried out. The problem faced in the use of thorium-based fuel is that the amount of 233U is small and not available in nature. 233U was produced through the 232Th breeding at a cost of $46 million/kg. That is a very high price when compared to 235U enrichment, which is only $100/kg. The MSR FUJI-12 used in this study is a generation IV reactor with a mixture of liquid salt fuel LiF-BeF2-ThF4-UF4 and thorium-based fuel (232Th+233U). In this study, neutronic analysis was carried out by replacing thorium-based fuel with uranium-based fuel (235U+238U). Neutronic analysis was performed using the OpenMC 0.13.0 code, which is a Monte Carlo simulation-based neutron analysis code. The nuclear data library used for neutronic calculations is ENDF B-VII/1. The fuel is used in a LiF-BeF2-UF4 molten salt mixture with three eutectic compositions: fuel 1, fuel 2, and fuel 3. Each fuel composition is optimized by enriching 235U in UF4 by 3 % to 8 %. The optimization results show the stability of the reactor criticality value, which is the main parameter so that the reactor can operate for the specified time. The optimization results show that fuel 1 cannot reach its optimal state in each variation of 235U enrichment. Fuel 2 and fuel 3 can reach optimal conditions at a minimum enrichment of 8 % and 7 % 235U. The results of the analysis of the distribution of the neutron flux in the reactor core show the distribution of nuclear reactions that occur in the core. The distribution of flux values in fuel 1 shows that the fission chain reaction is not running perfectly. Fuel 2 and fuel 3 are more stable by maintaining maximum flux at the center of the reactor core.
References
- Electricity Market Report (2022). IEA. doi: https://doi.org/10.1787/71a62db8-en
- Global Electricity Review 2020 (2020). EMBER. Available at: https://resources.solarbusinesshub.com/solar-industry-reports/item/global-electricity-review-2020
- The Database on Nuclear Power Reactors (2022). IAEA. Available at: https://pris.iaea.org/pris/ Last accessed: 20.06.2022
- Aji, I. K., Waris, A. (2010). Studi pemanfaatan plutonium sebagai bahan bakar pada molten salt reactor FUJI-12. Available at: https://pdfcoffee.com/studi-pemanfaatan-plutonium-sebagai-bahan-bakar-pada-molten-salt-reactor-fuji-12-indarta-kuncoro-aji-2010-pdf-free.html
- James, R. A. (1978). The economics of thorium fuel cycles. Available at: https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:11560136
- Forsberg, C. W., Lewis, L. C. (1999). Uses For Uranium-233 : What Should Be Kept for Future Needs ? Available at: https://moltensalt.org/references/static/downloads/pdf/ORNL-6952.pdf
- Waris, A., Yulianti, Y., Shafii, M. A., Taufiq, I., Su’ud, Z., Aji, I. K. (2010). Comparative Study on 233 U and Plutonium Utilization in Molten Salt Reactor. Indonesian Journal of Physics, 21 (3).
- Aji, I. K., Waris, A. (2014). Preliminary study on weapon grade uranium utilization in molten salt reactor miniFUJI. AIP Conference Proceedings, 1615, 57–60. doi: http://doi.org/10.1063/1.4895861
- Hassan, A. A., Alassaf, S. H., Savander, V. I., Afanasyev, V. V., Abu Sondos, M. A. (2020). Investigation of using U-233 in thorium base instead of conventional fuel in Russian PWR by SERPENT Code. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1689 (1), 012031. doi: https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1689/1/012031
- Dunkle, N. J., Pathirana, V., Wheeler, A., Chvala, O., Skutnik, S. E. (2022). NERTHUS Thermal Molten Salt Reactor Neutronics and Fuel Cycle Model. SSRN Electronic Journal. doi: https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4134072
- Surenkov, A. I., Ignatiev, V. V., Uglov, V. S. (2020). Corrosion phenomena induced by coolant , blanket and fuel salts : focus on stainless steels and high nickel alloys. IAEA TECDOC Ser., 204–211.
- Mikcus, I., (2021). Towards Efficient Monte Carlo Calculations in Reactor Physics. Stockholm, 89.
- Carney, S., Brown, F., Kiedrowski, B., Martin, W. (2014). Theory and applications of the fission matrix method for continuous-energy Monte Carlo. Annals of Nuclear Energy, 73, 423–431. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anucene.2014.07.020
- Jones, L. V., Etter, D. E., Hudgens, C. R., Huffman, A. A., Rhinehammer, T. B., Rogers, N. E. et. al. (1962). Phase Equilibria in the Ternary Fused-Salt System LiF-BeF2,-UF4. Journal of the American Ceramic Society, 45 (2), 79–83. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1151-2916.1962.tb11084.x
- van der Meer, J. P. M., Konings, R. J. M., Oonk, H. A. J. (2006). Thermodynamic assessment of the LiF-BeF2-ThF4-UF4 system. Journal of Nuclear Materials, 357 (1-3), 48–57. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnucmat.2006.05.042
- Bahri, C. N. A. C. Z., Al-Areqi, W. M., Ruf, M. ’Izzat F. M., Majid, A. Ab. (2017). Characteristic of molten fluoride salt system LiF-BeF2 (Flibe) and LiF-NaF-KF (Flinak) as coolant and fuel carrier in molten salt reactor (MSR). AIP Conference Proceedings, 1799. doi: https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4972932
- Forsberg, C. W., Carpenter, D. M., Whyte, D. G., Scarlat, R., Wei, L. (2017). Tritium Control and Capture in Salt-Cooled Fission and Fusion Reactors. Fusion Science and Technology, 71 (4), 584–589. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1289450
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Ahmad Muzaki Mabruri, Ratna Dewi Syarifah, Indarta Kuncoro Aji, Zein Hanifah, Artoto Arkundato, Gaguk Jatisukamto
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The consolidation and conditions for the transfer of copyright (identification of authorship) is carried out in the License Agreement. In particular, the authors reserve the right to the authorship of their manuscript and transfer the first publication of this work to the journal under the terms of the Creative Commons CC BY license. At the same time, they have the right to conclude on their own additional agreements concerning the non-exclusive distribution of the work in the form in which it was published by this journal, but provided that the link to the first publication of the article in this journal is preserved.
A license agreement is a document in which the author warrants that he/she owns all copyright for the work (manuscript, article, etc.).
The authors, signing the License Agreement with TECHNOLOGY CENTER PC, have all rights to the further use of their work, provided that they link to our edition in which the work was published.
According to the terms of the License Agreement, the Publisher TECHNOLOGY CENTER PC does not take away your copyrights and receives permission from the authors to use and dissemination of the publication through the world's scientific resources (own electronic resources, scientometric databases, repositories, libraries, etc.).
In the absence of a signed License Agreement or in the absence of this agreement of identifiers allowing to identify the identity of the author, the editors have no right to work with the manuscript.
It is important to remember that there is another type of agreement between authors and publishers – when copyright is transferred from the authors to the publisher. In this case, the authors lose ownership of their work and may not use it in any way.
