MULTIPHYSICS MODELING OF PRECURSORS IN MOLTEN SALT FAST REACTORS USING PROTEUS AND Nek5000

Argonne National Laboratory 9700 South Cass Avenue, Lemont, IL 60439 USA

bofeng@anl.gov
tfei@anl.gov
dshaver@anl.gov
yjung@anl.gov

Published online: 22 February 2021

Abstract

The goal of this work was to calculate the impact of the delayed neutron precursor drift in fast spectrum Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs) using coupled solutions from the neutronics code PROTEUS and the computational fluid dynamics code Nek5000. Specifically, using a multiphysics approach to solve the effective delayed neutron fraction (βeff) or delayed neutron precursor distribution for reactors with flowing fuel salts would provide valuable information for transient simulations and safety assessments. Given the multiple options for the flux solution and geometric resolution/fidelity in PROTEUS, two approaches were developed and applied to various test cases: PROTEUS-NODAL/Nek5000 and PROTEUS-SN/Nek5000. For the former, the precursors are tracked in the built-in precursor drift model in PROTEUS-NODAL, whereas in the latter, Nek5000 directly tracks the precursors. Both approaches were used to solve a single test channel problem and showed excellent agreement in the calculated β_eff. Separately, a 3D hourglass-shaped core was modeled using the PROTEUS-SN/Nek5000 approach. This problem was designed to demonstrate the capability of the discrete ordinates (S_N) solver and Nek5000 to model complex core designs with axially varying geometries and the ability for Nek5000 to track the precursors and calculate the resulting β_eff. In addition, the Nek5000 calculations revealed the presence of recirculation zones in the hourglass design, which could lead to significant temperatures in the fuel salt and surrounding materials. These first coupled solutions show why these approaches may be necessary for not only predicting the precursor drift effect in fast MSRs but also for reactor design and performance assessments.