Investigation and Design of a Secure, Transportable Fluoride-salt-cooled High-temperature Reactor (TFHR) for Isolated Locations PDF Download
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Author: Ruaridh R. Macdonald Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 95
Book Description
In this work we describe a preliminary design for a transportable fluoride salt cooled high temperature reactor (TFHR) intended for use as a variable output heat and electricity source for off-grid locations. The goals of the project were to design an economic reactor: a) Sized for the average load of a site but able to increase output to provide peaking power. b) With safety, security and safeguard requirements met by the choice of materials and form as opposed to relying on security forces and infrastructure. Powering remote sites such as mining stations, military bases, communities or even large ships could be a significant long term market for small nuclear reactors. However, the design basis is very different. The increased cost of transporting goods to the site and maintaining a large population of specialists means a reactor must be simpler to operate and able to defend itself against attackers and proliferators without a large security force. On the other hand, the increased cost of electricity in remote places means more can be spent to meet these goals. This report discusses these issues of operating at a remote site and a general strategy for meeting the resulting design criteria. The TFHR design puts these decisions into practice. The TFHR described is a 125MWth, thermal spectrum reactor using SiC-matrix coated particle fuel which can achieve single batch discharge burnups of up to 70MWd/HMkg over an 8 year cycle. Higher burnups are possible for larger cores. The neutronics properties of SiC-matrix coated particle fuel are explored in detail and various means by which they can be incorporated into a reactor are detailed. The TFHR uses a nuclear air Brayton combined cycle (NACC) for electricity generation, adapted from an off the shelf GE aero-derivative gas turbine. The NACC incorporates a combustible fuel injection port between the high and low pressure turbines which can be used to raise the temperature of the working fluid and boost the power extracted from the system by up to 50%. This increase of electric output occurs without changing the power drawn drawn from the reactor, avoiding any transients. The ability to peak the power output removes the need for a second power system or for the reactor to be sized for the maximum power demand, which is a significant cost saving. However, using an air Brayton cycle requires a high temperature reactor. A TFHR is a better match for this purpose than a gas cooled reactor as it operates at atmospheric pressure, making it easier to meet the security goals described above.
Author: Ruaridh R. Macdonald Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 95
Book Description
In this work we describe a preliminary design for a transportable fluoride salt cooled high temperature reactor (TFHR) intended for use as a variable output heat and electricity source for off-grid locations. The goals of the project were to design an economic reactor: a) Sized for the average load of a site but able to increase output to provide peaking power. b) With safety, security and safeguard requirements met by the choice of materials and form as opposed to relying on security forces and infrastructure. Powering remote sites such as mining stations, military bases, communities or even large ships could be a significant long term market for small nuclear reactors. However, the design basis is very different. The increased cost of transporting goods to the site and maintaining a large population of specialists means a reactor must be simpler to operate and able to defend itself against attackers and proliferators without a large security force. On the other hand, the increased cost of electricity in remote places means more can be spent to meet these goals. This report discusses these issues of operating at a remote site and a general strategy for meeting the resulting design criteria. The TFHR design puts these decisions into practice. The TFHR described is a 125MWth, thermal spectrum reactor using SiC-matrix coated particle fuel which can achieve single batch discharge burnups of up to 70MWd/HMkg over an 8 year cycle. Higher burnups are possible for larger cores. The neutronics properties of SiC-matrix coated particle fuel are explored in detail and various means by which they can be incorporated into a reactor are detailed. The TFHR uses a nuclear air Brayton combined cycle (NACC) for electricity generation, adapted from an off the shelf GE aero-derivative gas turbine. The NACC incorporates a combustible fuel injection port between the high and low pressure turbines which can be used to raise the temperature of the working fluid and boost the power extracted from the system by up to 50%. This increase of electric output occurs without changing the power drawn drawn from the reactor, avoiding any transients. The ability to peak the power output removes the need for a second power system or for the reactor to be sized for the maximum power demand, which is a significant cost saving. However, using an air Brayton cycle requires a high temperature reactor. A TFHR is a better match for this purpose than a gas cooled reactor as it operates at atmospheric pressure, making it easier to meet the security goals described above.
Author: Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 63
Book Description
In 2011 the U.S. Department of Energy through its Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP) awarded a 3- year integrated research project (IRP) to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and its partners at the University of California at Berkeley (UCB) and the University of Wisconsin at Madison (UW). The IRP included Westinghouse Electric Company and an advisory panel chaired by Regis Matzie that provided advice as the project progressed. The first sentence of the proposal stated the goals: The objective of this Integrated Research Project (IRP) is to develop a path forward to a commercially viable salt-cooled solid-fuel high-temperature reactor with superior economic, safety, waste, nonproliferation, and physical security characteristics compared to light-water reactors. This report summarizes major results of this research.
Author: Molten Salt Panel of the Committee on Remediation of Buried and Tank Wastes Publisher: National Academies Press ISBN: 0309590108 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 148
Book Description
This book discusses the technical alternatives for cleanup of radioactive fluoride salts that were the fuel for the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, a novel nuclear reactor design that was tested in the 1960s at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. These fluoride salts pose an unusual cleanup challenge. The book discusses alternatives for processing and removing the salts based on present knowledge of fluoride salt chemistry and nuclear reactions of the radioactive constituents.
Author: National Research Council Publisher: National Academies Press ISBN: 0309056845 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 148
Book Description
This book discusses the technical alternatives for cleanup of radioactive fluoride salts that were the fuel for the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, a novel nuclear reactor design that was tested in the 1960s at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. These fluoride salts pose an unusual cleanup challenge. The book discusses alternatives for processing and removing the salts based on present knowledge of fluoride salt chemistry and nuclear reactions of the radioactive constituents.
Author: Rebecca Rose Romatoski Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 307
Book Description
An important Fluoride-salt-cooled High-temperature Reactor (FHR) development step is to design, build, and operate a test reactor. Through a literature review, liquid-salt coolant thermophysical properties have been recommended along with their uncertainties of 2-20%. This study tackles determining the effects of these high uncertainties by proposing a newly developed methodology to incorporate uncertainty propagation in a thermal-hydraulic safety analysis for test reactor licensing. A hot channel model, Monte Carlo statistical sampling uncertainty propagation, and limiting safety systems settings (LSSS) approach are uniquely combined to ensure sufficient margin to fuel and material thermal limits during steady-state operation and to incorporate margin for high uncertainty inputs. The method calculates LSSS parameters to define safe operation. The methodology has been applied to two test reactors currently considered, the Chinese TMSR-SF1 pebble bed design and MIT's Transportable FHR prismatic core design; two candidate coolants, flibe (LiF-BeF2) and nafzirf (NaF-ZrF4); and forced flow and natural circulation conditions to compare operating regions and LSSS power (maximum power not exceeding any thermal limits). The calculated operating region accounts for uncertainty (2 [sigma]) with LSSS power (MW) for forced flow of 25.37±0.72, 22.56±1.15, 21.28±1.48, and 11.32±1.35 for pebble flibe, pebble nafzirf, prismatic flibe, and prismatic nafzirf, respectively. The pebble bed has superior heat transfer with an operating region reduced ~10% less when switching coolants and ~50% smaller uncertainty than the prismatic. The maximum fuel temperature constrains the pebble bed while the maximum coolant temperature constrains the prismatic due to different dominant heat transfer modes. Sensitivity analysis revealed 1) thermal conductivity and thus conductive heat transfer dominates in the prismatic design while convection is superior in the pebble bed, and 2) the impact of thermophysical property uncertainties are ranked in the following order: thermal conductivity, heat capacity, density, and lastly viscosity. Broadly, the methodology developed incorporates uncertainty propagation that can be used to evaluate parametric uncertainties to satisfy guidelines for non-power reactor licensing applications, and method application shows the pebble bed is more attractive for thermal-hydraulic safety. Although the method was developed and evaluated for coolant property uncertainties for FHR, it is readily applicable for any parameters of interest.
Author: Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
This document presents the results of a study conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory during 2010 to explore the feasibility of small modular fluoride salt-cooled high temperature reactors (FHRs). A preliminary reactor system concept, SmATHR (for Small modular Advanced High Temperature Reactor) is described, along with an integrated high-temperature thermal energy storage or salt vault system. The SmAHTR is a 125 MWt, integral primary, liquid salt cooled, coated particle-graphite fueled, low-pressure system operating at 700 C. The system employs passive decay heat removal and two-out-of-three, 50% capacity, subsystem redundancy for critical functions. The reactor vessel is sufficiently small to be transportable on standard commercial tractor-trailer transport vehicles. Initial transient analyses indicated the transition from normal reactor operations to passive decay heat removal is accomplished in a manner that preserves robust safety margins at all times during the transient. Numerous trade studies and trade-space considerations are discussed, along with the resultant initial system concept. The current concept is not optimized. Work remains to more completely define the overall system with particular emphasis on refining the final fuel/core configuration, salt vault configuration, and integrated system dynamics and safety behavior.
Author: Joshua Glenn Richard Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 231
Book Description
Fluoride Salt Cooled High Temperature Reactors (FHRs) are a new reactor concept that have recently garnered interest because of their potential to serve missions and generate revenue from sources beyond those of traditional base-load light water reactor (LWR) designs. This potential is facilitated by high-temperature, atmospheric-pressure operation enabled by the incorporation of liquid fluoride salt coolants together with solid microparticle TRISO fuel. Since no FHR has been built, an important technology development step is the design, construction, and operation of a FHR test reactor (FHTR). The FHTR's strategic goals cannot be satisfied using small-scale experiments or test loops: (1) develop the safety and licensing basis for a commercial plant; (2) demonstrate technological viability and provide operational and maintenance experience; and (3) test alternative fuels, fluoride salt coolants, and structures in an actual reactor configuration. The goals of the FHTR support the development of the commercial FHR, but are different. The programmatic goals for the FHTR drive the specification of the technical design goals: (1) capability to switch between any one of various potential liquid fluoride salt coolants; (2) provide an irradiation facility for accelerated fuels and materials testing. The first stage of the present work included an exploration and characterization of the available design space for an FHTR. Many different core, reflector, and assembly designs were evaluated to determine configurations that possessed acceptable performance while satisfying all design constraints. This work resulted in a novel prismatic block assembly design termed Fuel Inside Radial Moderator (FIRM), which leverages spatial selfshielding of the fuel microparticles to increase core reactivity by ~10,000 pcm relative to a traditional prismatic block design, enabling operation with any of the proposed liquid fluoride salt coolants. This stage of work served to focus the search space for the application of formal optimization algorithms to further improve the feasible design. The second stage of the present work involved the development of a methodology to perform full-core optimization of the feasible FHTR design and its implementation into usable software. The OpenFRO (Open source Framework for Reactor Optimization) code implements the Efficient Global Optimization (EGO) surrogate-based optimization framework, which has been successfully applied to aerospace and automotive engineering optimization problems in the past. OpenFRO extends the EGO framework to full-core reactor optimization in the presence of uncertainty, enabling an effective, automated, and efficient approach for earlystage reactor design. OpenFRO's EGO implementation imposes minimal computational overhead while reducing the number of required high-fidelity simulations for optimization by 96%. The final stage of the present work involved the identification and analysis of the optimal design of the FHTR. The optimal design was selected based on its capability to provide the best performance across potential salt coolants and power levels. The optimal design achieved irradiation position fluxes 90%-130% greater than the feasible design initially identified, while satisfying all safety and performance constraints.
Author: Matthew Joseph Minck Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 177
Book Description
The fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor (FHR) combines high-temperature coated-particle fuel with a high-temperature salt coolant for a reactor with unique market and safety characteristics. This combination can eliminate large-scale radionuclide releases by avoiding major fuel failure during a catastrophic Beyond Design Basis Accident (BDBA). The high-temperature core contains liquid salt coolant surrounded by a liquid salt buffer; these salts limit core heatup while decay heat drops. The vessel insulation is designed to fail during a BDBA. The silo contains a frozen BDBA salt designed to melt and surround the reactor vessel during a major accident to accelerate heat transfer from the vessel. These features provide the required temperature gradient to drive decay heat from core to the vessel wall and to the environment below fuel failure temperatures. A 1047 MWth FHR was modeled using the STAR-CCM+ computational fluid dynamics package. Peak temperatures and heat transfer phenomena were calculated, focusing on feasibility of melting the BDBA salt that improves heat transfer from vessel to silo. A simplified wavelength-independent radiation model was examined to approximate the heat transfer capability with radiation heat transfer. The FHR BDBA system kept peak temperatures below the fuel failure point in all cases. Reducing the reactor vessel-silo gap size minimized the time to melt the BDBA salt. Radiation heat transfer is a dominant factor in the high-temperature accident sequence. It keeps peak fuel temperatures hundreds of degrees lower than with convection and conduction only; it makes higher core powers feasible. The FHR's atmospheric pressure design allows a thin reactor vessel, ensuring the high accident temperatures reach the vessel's outer surface, creating a large temperature difference from the vessel to the frozen salt. This greatly accelerates the heat transfer over current reactor designs with thick, relatively cool accident outer vessel temperatures. The frozen BDBA salt in the FHR places a limit on the upper temperature at the vessel outer boundary for significant time; it is a substantial heat sink for the accident duration. Finally, surrounding the FHR vessel, the convection of hot air, and circulating salt later in the accident, preferentially transports heat upward in the FHR; this provides a conduction path through the concrete silo to the atmosphere above the FHR.
Author: Ruaridh R. Macdonald
Author: Ruaridh R. Macdonald
Author: 
Author: Molten Salt Panel of the Committee on Remediation of Buried and Tank Wastes
Author: National Research Council
Author: Rebecca Rose Romatoski
Author: 
Author: Joshua Glenn Richard
Author: Matthew Joseph Minck
Author: Edward Blandford
Author: Todd Allen