Abstract
The enhancement of safety, sustainability, and social acceptance is the main requirements for a nuclear renaissance. Two Gen IV concepts, the molten salt reactor and the high-temperature reactor, have a potential for the paradigm shift in nuclear safety, and Switzerland is involved in the international research efforts dedicated to both of these reactors. Due to the liquid fuel state, especially molten salt reactor (MSR) can act as a safe, sustainable, and acceptable reactor for the future. Main aim of the MSR research program in Switzerland is the safety. Nonetheless, possible MSR designs and so the fuel cycles are also evaluated. At the same time, tools are being developed for MSR transient analysis and thermochemical simulations.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
M. Taube, W. Heer, Reactor with Very Low Fission Product Inventory. Report Nr. 411 (Eidgenössisches Institut für Reaktorforschung (EIR), Würenlingen, AG, Switzerland, 1980)
G. Rimpault, et al., The ERANOS code and data system for fast reactor neutronic analyses, in PHYSOR 2002, Seoul, Korea, 7–10 Oct 2002
J. Křepel et al., Fuel cycle advantages and dynamics features of liquid fueled MSR. Ann. Nucl. Energy 64, 380–397 (2013)
J. Křepel et al., EQL3D: ERANOS based equilibrium fuel cycle procedure for fast reactors. Ann. Nucl. Energy 36, 550–561 (2009)
C. Fiorina et al., Investigation of the MSFR core physics and fuel cycle characteristics. Prog. Nucl. Energy 68, 153–168 (2013)
B. Hombourger, Parametric lattice study for conception of a molten salt reactor in closed thorium fuel cycle, Master’s thesis, joint EPFL-ETHZ Master of Science in Nuclear Engineering, 2013
B. Hombourger, et al., Parametric lattice study of a graphite-moderated molten salt reactor. J. Nucl. Eng. Radiat. Scince. 1 (2015)
B. Hombourger, et al., The EQL0D procedure for fuel cycle studies in molten salt reactors, in ICAPP 2016, San Francisco, USA, 17–20 April 2016
J. Leppänen, Serpent a continuous-energy monte carlo reactor physics burnup calculation code (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Finland, 2013)
A.H. Al-Mohy, N.J. Higham, A new scaling and squaring algorithm for the matrix exponential. SIAM. J. Matrix Anal. Appl. 31(3), 970–989 (2009)
M. Pusa, J. Leppänen, Solving linear systems with sparse gaussian elimination in the chebyshev rational approximation method. Nucl. Sci. Eng. 175(3), 250–258 (2013)
B. Hombourger, et al., Fuel cycle analysis of a molten salt reactor for breed-and-burn mode, in ICAPP 2015, Nice, France, 03–06 May 2015
J. Křepel, et al., Hybrid spectrum molten salt reactor, in PHYSOR 2014, Kyoto, Japan, 28 Sept–3 Oct 2014
J. Křepel, et al., Molten salt reactor with simplified fuel recycling and delayed carrier salt cleaning, in Proceedings of ICONE 22, Prague, Czechia, 7–11 July 2014
J. Křepel, et al., Comparison of several recycling strategies and relevant fuel cycles for molten salt reactor, in ICAPP 2015, Nice, France, 03–06 May 2015
D.A. Kulik, S.V. Dmytrieva, T. Wagner, G. Kosakowski, T. Thoenen, U. Berner, et al., Gibbs energy minimization software (GEMS) homepage (2004–2014), http://gems.web.psi.ch
N. Shcherbina, N. Kivel, I. Günther-Leopold, D.A. Kulik, J. Bertsch, HERACLES project and thermodynamic database homepage (2012), http://www.psi.ch/heracles/heracles
D.A. Kulik, T. Wagner, S.V. Dmytrieva, G. Kosakowski, F.F. Hingerl, K.V. Chudnenko, U. Berner, GEM-Selektor geochemical modeling package: revised algorithm and GEMS3K numerical kernel for coupled simulation codes. Comput. Geosci. 17, 1–24 (2013)
T. Wagner, D.A. Kulik, F.F. Hingerl, S.V. Dmytrieva, GEM-selektor geochemical modeling package: TSolMod library and data interface for multicomponent phase models. Can. Mineral. 50, 1173–1195 (2012)
S. Nichenko, M. Streit, Thermodynamic modelling of molybdenum behaviour in chloride molten salt, in Proceedings of TopFuel-2015, Zurich, Switzerland, 13–17 Sept 2015
J. Dai, X. Li, L. Zhao, H. Sun, Enthalpies of mixing predicted using molecular dynamics simulations and OPLS force field. Fluid Ph. Equilib. 289, 156–165 (2010)
J. Dai, C. Wu, X. Bao, H. Sun, Prediction of the heat of mixing for binary fluids using molecular dynamics simulation. Fluid Ph. Equilib. 236, 78–85 (2005)
S. Nichenko, D. Staicu, Molecular dynamics study of the mixed oxide fuel thermal conductivity. J. Nucl. Mater. 439(1–3), 93–98 (2013)
S. Nichenko, D. Staicu, Thermal conductivity of porous UO2: molecular dynamics study. J. Nucl. Mater. 454(1–3), 315–322 (2014)
C. Fiorina et al., GeN-Foam: a novel OpenFOAM® based multi-physics solver for 2D/3D transient analysis of nuclear reactors. Nucl. Eng. Des. 294(2015), 24–37 (2015)
C. Fiorina, K. Mikityuk, Application of the new GeN-Foam multi-physics solver to the European sodium fast reactor and verification against available codes, in Proceedings of ICAPP 2015, Nice, France, Paper 15226, 03–06 May 2015
C. Fiorina, et al., Development and verification of the neutron diffusion solver for the GeN-Foam multi-physics platform. Ann. Nucl. Energy 96, 212–222 (2016)
V. Ariu, Heat exchanger analysis for innovative molten salt fast reactor. M.Sc. thesis, EPFL ETHZ joint M.Sc. in Nuclear Engineering, Switzerland, 2014
M. Zanetti, et al., Extension of the FAST code system for the modelling and simulation of MSR dynamics, in Proceedings of ICAPP 2015. Paper 15226, Nice, France, 03–06 May 2015
H. Kim, Static and transient analysis of molten salt reactor experiment using Serpent/TRACE/PARCS codes. M.Sc. thesis, EPFL ETHZ joint M.Sc. in Nuclear Engineering, Switzerland, 2015
J. Choe, Empirical decay heat correlation and fission product behavior in MSR. M.Sc. thesis, EPFL ETHZ joint M.Sc. in Nuclear Engineering, Switzerland, 2015
J. Bao, Development of the model for the multi-physics analysis of molten salt reactor Experiment using GeN-Foam code. M.Sc. thesis, EPFL ETHZ joint M.Sc. in Nuclear Engineering, Switzerland, 2016
E. Pettersen, Coupled multi-physics simulations of the MSFR using TRACE-PARCS. M.Sc. thesis, PSI defended at Universite Paris-Saclay, France, 2016
C. Bosshard, et al., Large eddy simulation of the differentially heated cubic cavity flow by the spectral element method. Comput. Fluids 86, 210–227 (2013)
P. Burgherr, S. Hirschberg, E. Cazzoli, Final report on quantification of risk indicators for sustainability assessment of future electricity supply options, in NEEDS Deliverable no D7.1—Research Stream 2b. NEEDS project “New Energy Externalities Developments for Sustainability” (Brussels, Belgium, 2008)
D. Pyron, Safety analysis for the licensing of molten salt reactors. M.Sc. thesis, EPFL ETHZ joint M.Sc. in Nuclear Engineering, Switzerland, 2016
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this paper
Cite this paper
Krepel, J. et al. (2019). Molten Salt Reactor Research in Switzerland. In: Nayak, A., Sehgal, B. (eds) Thorium—Energy for the Future. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2658-5_38
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2658-5_38
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-13-2657-8
Online ISBN: 978-981-13-2658-5
eBook Packages: EnergyEnergy (R0)