High temperature thermal hydraulics modeling of a molten salt: application to a molten salt fast reactor (MSFR) ***

Abstract

An overview of the ongoing efforts in the area of the thermal hydraulics modeling of a Molten Salt Fast Reactor (MSFR) is presented. The MSFR employs a flowing liquid fuel based on a high temperature lithium fluoride salt. A molten salt flow can be considered in many situations as an incompressible flow. However, several phenomena intrinsic to a molten salt flow pose unique challenges (radiative heat transfer, volumetric heat source, strong neutronics feedbacks, etc.). To study some of these phenomena and to improve current Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models an experimental facility called SWATH (Salt at WAll: Thermal ExcHanges) will be built as part of the European project SAMOFAR (2015-2019).