Molten Salt Fast Reactor Blanket Design and Proliferation Resistance Assessment (original) (raw)

2012, Proceedings of the 2014 22nd International Conference on Nuclear Engineering

Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) designs are frequently accompanied by a blanket salt. This way the irradiation of the outer reactor wall will be strongly reduced. On the other hand, the barrier between the core and blanket will undergo higher irradiation and it will be necessary to replace it several times during the reactor lifetime. Furthermore, this blanket salt will also have a positive impact on neutron economy by improving the breeding performance. In this paper a blanket of a generic two fluid molten salt reactor utilizing fast thorium-uranium cycle was investigated. This was done by tracking the evolution of uranium, neptunium and plutonium isotopes with burnup, which was then influenced by removal of uranium from the blanket. A significant reduction in the production of minor actinides was observed. The uranium vector removed from the core was then investigated for proliferation resistance, using NUREC proliferation resistance metric and comparison with other weapon designs. The evaluation concluded that while the presence of U-232 increases radiological hazard associated with this uranium, thereby erecting a radiological barrier, it cannot be treated as "self-protecting" based on IAEA and NRC standards, requiring 1 Sv/h at 1m dose rate. Moreover ideas on how an interested party could reduce this radiological hazard were discussed.

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