Abstract
All reactor designs over the past 50 years designed to use molten salt fuel have shared a common misconception that such fuel must be actively pumped between a reaction chamber and a heat exchanger. This design philosophy originated with the Aircraft Reactor experiment and the Molten Salt Reactor experiment and has not been challenged since. Application of modern tools of computational fluid dynamics to the question shows that in fact the use of molten salt fuel in fuel tubes very similar to those used in conventional solid-fueled reactors is entirely practical and makes possible a radically simpler design of molten salt-fueled reactor, the Stable Salt Reactor.
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Reference
ORNL Report 919. http://web.ornl.gov/info/reports/1951/3445605662896.pdf
Acknowledgements
The advances in reactor design set out in this paper would not have occurred without the generous support of Tim Abram, Olga Negri, Hugues Lambert, and Joel Turner from Manchester University. Prof. Derek Fray FRS from Cambridge University provided invaluable advice on chemical thermodynamics. Simon Leefe from Wilde Analysis Ltd. carried out the CFD studies.
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© 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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Scott, I.R. (2019). The Stable Salt Reactor—A Radically Simpler Option for Use of Molten Salt Fuel. In: Nayak, A., Sehgal, B. (eds) Thorium—Energy for the Future. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2658-5_37
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2658-5_37
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