THE LiCore POWER PLANT SIMULATOR OF THE MOLTEN SALT FAST REACTOR

Abstract

Molten salt reactors as liquid-fuelled reactors are flexible in terms of operation or design choices, but they are very different in terms of design, operation and safety approach compared to solid-fuelled reactors. Such reactors call for a new definition of their operating procedures and safety approach. Dedicated developments and studies have been performed in the frame of the European SAMOFAR project of Horizon2020 and in parallel in France involving CNRS, CORYS and Framatome to develop a system code called LiCore adapted to such reactors, corresponding to a basic-principle power plant simulator. The neutronic model LiCore, at the centre of the simulator, corresponds to an improved point-kinetics model to take into account the specificities of a MSR, notably the circulation of the delayed neutron precursors out of the core. Coupled to a simple piston model for the fuel motion in the core, this code can perform calculations faster than real time to simulate the behaviour of the fuel circuit. Transient calculations performed with LiCore are presented, together with comparisons first to a simple point-kinetics model and then to 3D calculations with the TFM-OpenFOAM coupled code. Finally, the LiCore code has recently been integrated in the ALICES platform, the integrated simulation toolset designed by CORYS for the development, maintenance and operation of major simulator such as power plant simulators.

Keywords

• molten salt reactors
• power plant simulator
• real time transient calculations