IMPACTS OF FAST-SPECTRUM MOLTEN SALT REACTOR CHARACTERISTICS ON FUEL CYCLE PERFORMANCE

摘要

The System Analysis and Integration Campaign nuclearfuel cycle evaluation and screening study was conducted tooutline the potential benefits and challenges of nuclear fuelcycle options. The study identified continuous recycle in fastcritical reactors as a common characteristic shared amongsome of the most promising future nuclear fuel cycles. Thisstudy was technology agnostic to focus on the underpinningphysics that drives fuel cycle outcomes. This process usedan analysis example to generate a physics-based understandingof the fuel cycle, and it yielded performance metrics overranges rather than comparing absolute numbers. While nofast-spectrum molten salt reactor (MSR) has ever been built,several concepts exist using dierent fuels and carrier salts,many of which target high-burnup objectives, such as lightwaterreactor nuclear waste consumption. Putting the resultingfuel cycle impacts of these reactor choices (e.g., fuel andneutron spectrum) into perspective is informative for our currentunderstanding of a given fuel cycle’s performance, and italso demonstrates the applicability of MSRs to dierent fuelcycles. It has been established that in a fuel cycle transition,performance of a given fast-spectrum MSR depends in part onthe initial fuel loading requirements and processing methods.