Fluoride Salt-Cooled High Temperature Test Reactor Core Design

摘要

A test reactor is necessary to demonstrate commercial viability of the FHR. The test reactor designed for the FHR herein has the capability to test two molten salts as the primary coolant-the more neutronically limiting NaF-ZrF_4 and more neutronically favorable 99.99% Li-7 enriched FLiBe. The FLiBe must be enriched with lithium-7 in order to use FLiBe as coolant. The test reactor provides a large central thermal test position suitable for fuel testing and six outer test positions for accelerated material testing. The peak flux in the center of the test reactor is 6.90·10 neutrons/cm~2-s at 100 MW. This substantially exceeds the design goal for neutron flux allowing more performance or lower power levels. Future work is necessary to optimize the core configuration and power level to achieve thermal hydraulics safety requirements and to incorporate depletion analysis for accurate determination of the fuel cycle length.