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The Basic Concepts For A Molten

Basic concepts for a molten

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12 views4 pages

The Basic Concepts For A Molten

Basic concepts for a molten

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lanistablack
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Using Molten Salt Reactors to Eliminate Waste

The basic concepts for a molten-salt reactor were presented in the United States in the

1950s. Instead of solid fuel rods, liquid fuel is used to power the reactor. Molten salt serves as its

liquid medium. This liquid phase dissolves fissile and fertile materials. The liquid media also

serves as a heat transmission medium and a solvent for the fission product. From 1965 to 1966,

the molten-salt reactor experiment (MSRE) was built and successfully conducted at Oak Ridge

National Laboratory (ORNL). There is no constructed molten-salt reactor, and this is the newest

operating molten-salt reactor.

Due to the extremely tiny amount of uranium-235 in nature and the lack of fissile isotope

in thorium, the history of nuclear reactors has been weighed on the ability of "breeding" to obtain

more replicated fissile material than its use. Because the value of plutonium is maximum in the

fast neutron zone, it is reasonable that a fast breeder reactor with plutonium was the principal

research and development target in the world until the 1990s. Following the success of the

molten-salt reactor (MSRE), the molten-salt breeder reactor (MSBR) was built. MSRE was built

to verify the features of the proposed molten-salt reactor architecture and material.

Because of the high operating temperature of roughly 700 °C at the exit of the main

circuit from the reactor core, a molten-salt reactor is projected to have a high thermal efficiency.

This reactor has a high level of intrinsic safety. When the temperature of the fuel salt rises to a

certain level, a freeze valve located just below the reactor vessel automatically opens. By gravity,

liquid fuel is immediately drained to a lower drain tank. Because molten salt is frozen by an

electrically controlled fan, the freeze valve operates correctly in the case of the FUKUSHIMA

station blackout. That is to say, when the reactor loses power, the fan shuts off and the frozen salt

melts.
Other criteria for constructing molten-salt reactors can be used to tackle the problem of

temperature reactivity coefficient. If neutron leakage from the reactor core is increased, for

example, the value will decrease. In this situation, the conversion ratio will be quite low. Another

option is to use a fast spectrum neutron rather than a thermal spectrum neutron. This is

accomplished by removing the graphite moderator from the core.

The majority of the planned molten-salt reactor designs are intended to be large-scale

generating reactors. The essential arrangements as a power system were the same, despite

various minor changes in reactor core designs. That is, the fission reaction occurs in the core; the

produced thermal energy heats the nearby molten-salt fuel; the hot liquid fuel is diverted from

the reactor core to the middle heat exchanger through an external pipe; the heat is transferred to

the secondary coolant via the thin wall of the intermediate heat exchanger; and the cooled

molten-salt fuel is pumped back into the reactor core.

Figure 1. Nuclear reactions and radioactive materials contained in light water reactor
Nuclear fuel exists exclusively in the center of the reactor core, as indicated in Figure 1,

and nuclear reaction also occurs in this region in the case of a light water reactor. This is also

where newly created radioactive elements are maintained, notably inside the nuclear fuel rod.

Although large levels of radiation are present, they are contained within the reactor vessel. As a

result, the radiation background around the main circuit does not grow excessive.

Because precursors are maintained in nuclear fuel pellets, delayed neutrons, which play a

vital role in reactor safety, only occur in the reactor core. Thermal heat created in the reactor core

is transmitted to a secondary loop through the thin wall of the steam generator (in the case of a

pressurized water reactor. Despite the presence of a small pinhole on the thin wall of the steam

generator, the primary circuit coolant contains no radioactive elements. Tritium is generated in

light water reactors as well, albeit in considerably lesser amounts than in molten-salt reactors that

use lithium as a medium.


References

Nuclear Security Summit. Available online: http://www.state.gov/t/isn/nuclearsecuritysummit/

index.htm (accessed on 30 June 2012).

Furukawa, K.; Arakawa, K.; Erbay, L.B.; Ito, Y.; Kato, Y.; Kiyavitskaya, H.; Lecocq, A.;

Mitachi, K.; Moir, R.; Numata, H.; et al. A road map for the realization of global-scale

thorium breeding fuel cycle by single molten-fluoride flow. Energy Convers. Manag.

2008, 49, 1832–1848.

Kamei, T. Study of nuclear environment & material strategy. Int. Electr. J. Nuclear Saf. Simul.

2011, 2, 339–349.

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