IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v17y2024i19p4772-d1484628.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the Use of a Chloride or Fluoride Salt Fuel System in Advanced Molten Salt Reactors, Part 3; Radiation Damage

Author

Listed:
  • Omid Noori-kalkhoran

    (School of Engineering, The University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GH, UK
    School of Engineering, Cardiff University, The Parade, Cardiff CF24 3AA, UK)

  • Lakshay Jain

    (School of Engineering, The University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GH, UK)

  • Bruno Merk

    (School of Engineering, The University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GH, UK
    School of Physical Sciences, The University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZF, UK)

Abstract

Structural materials in fast reactors with harsh radiation environments due to high energy neutrons—compared to thermal reactors—potentially suffer from a higher degree of radiation damage. This radiation damage can change the thermophysical and mechanical properties of materials and, as a result, alter their performance and effective lifetime, in some cases leading to their disintegration. These phenomena can jeopardize the safety of fast reactors and thus need to be investigated. In this study, the effect of radiation damage on the vessels of molten salt fast reactors (MSFR) was evaluated based on two fundamental radiation damage parameters: displacement per atom (dpa) and primary knock-on atom (pka). Following the previous part of this article (Parts 1 and 2), an iMAGINE reactor core design (University of Liverpool, UK—chloride-based salt fuel system) and an EVOL reactor core design (CNRS, Grenoble, France, fluoride-based salt fuel system) with stainless steel and nickel-based alloy material vessels, respectively, were considered as case studies. The SPECTER and SPECTRA-PKA codes and a PTRAC card of MCNPX, integrated with a module which has been developed in MATLAB, named PTRIM and SRIM-2013 (using binary collision approximation), were employed individually to calculate and compare dpa and PKA (this master module containing all three tools has been appended to the iMAGINE-3BIC package for future use during reactor operations). Additionally, SRIM-2013 was applied in a 3D simulation of a radiation damage map on a small sample of vessels based on the calculated PKA. Our results showed a higher degree of radiation damage in the iMAGINE vessel compared to the EVOL one, which could be expected due to the harder neutron flux spectrum of the iMAGINE core compared to EVOL. In addition, the nickel alloy vessel showed better radiation damage resistance against high energy neutrons compared to the stainless steel one, although more investigations are required on thermal neutrons and alloy corrosion mechanisms to determine the best material for use in MSFR vessels.

Suggested Citation

  • Omid Noori-kalkhoran & Lakshay Jain & Bruno Merk, 2024. "On the Use of a Chloride or Fluoride Salt Fuel System in Advanced Molten Salt Reactors, Part 3; Radiation Damage," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(19), pages 1-14, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:17:y:2024:i:19:p:4772-:d:1484628
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/19/4772/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/19/4772/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:17:y:2024:i:19:p:4772-:d:1484628. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.