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Phenomena identification and ranking table exercise for thorium based molten salt reactor-solid fuel design

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Abstract

Thorium based molten salt reactor-solid fuel (TMSR-SF) design is an innovative reactor concept that uses high-temperature tristructural-isotropic (TRISO) fuel with a low-pressure liquid salt coolant. In anticipation of getting licensed applications for TMSR-SF in the future, it is necessary to fully understand the significant features and phenomena of TMSR-SF design, as well as its transient behavior during accidents. In this paper, the safety-relevant phenomena, importance, and knowledge base were assessed for the selected events and the transient of TMSR-SF during station blackout scenario is simulated based on RELAP/SCDAPSIM Mod 4.0.

The phenomena having significant impact but with limited knowledge of their history are core coolant bypass flows, outlet plenum flow distribution, and intermediate heat exchanger (IHX) over/under cooling transients. Some thermal hydraulic parameters during the station blackout scenario are also discussed.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Xiaojing Liu, Qi Wang & Xu Cheng

  2. Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201800, China

    Zhaozhong He & Kun Chen

Authors
  1. Xiaojing Liu
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  2. Qi Wang
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  3. Zhaozhong He
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  4. Kun Chen
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  5. Xu Cheng
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Correspondence to Xiaojing Liu.

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Liu, X., Wang, Q., He, Z. et al. Phenomena identification and ranking table exercise for thorium based molten salt reactor-solid fuel design. Front. Energy 13, 707–714 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11708-019-0616-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11708-019-0616-0

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