Engineering Commons^™

Libowski: A Numerical Framework For Solving Depletion And Mass Transport In Molten Salt Reactors, Robert Z. Taylor

Doctoral Dissertations

Molten salt reactors (MSRs) are a class of next-generation liquid fueled nuclear reactor which show great promise and industrial interest. With this type of reactor comes great difficulty in many modeling and simulation aspects which are required for design, operational efficiency and regulatory licensing. Solving the set of coupled depletion and mass transport equations required for modeling and simulations of these reactors is of great interest. This manuscript discusses the formulation of a numerical framework for solving the complex set of depletion and mass transport problems in MSRs. This is accomplished by first defining the set of equations that must …

Sensitivity Of Vver-1000 Spent Fuel Pin Nuclide Inventory To Operational Parameters, Nicholas Patrick Luciano

Doctoral Dissertations

Tools that can rapidly compute the isotopic composition of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) are useful for many reasons, including safety and security. Although tools exist to compute approximate isotopic compositions, detailed fuel composition requires reactor simulation that result from normal and off-normal operations. Reactor simulation is typically performed using nodal core simulators. These codes perform their calculations rapidly, but they may not compute isotopic composition.

The Russian designed VVER is a pressurized water reactor that uses hexagonal fuel assemblies with triangularly pitched fuel rods and annular pellets. The international expansion of VVER-1000 reactor technology has motivated a renewed interest in …

Monte Carlo And Depletion Reactor Analysis For High-Performance Computing Applications, Brenden Thomas Mervin

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation discusses the research and development for a coupled neutron trans- port/isotopic depletion capability for use in high-preformance computing applications. Accurate neutronics modeling and simulation for \real" reactor problems has been a long sought after goal in the computational community. A complementary \stretch goal" to this is the ability to perform full-core depletion analysis and spent fuel isotopic characterization. This dissertation thus presents the research and development of a coupled Monte Carlo transport/isotopic depletion implementation with the Exnihilo framework geared for high-performance computing architectures to enable neutronics analysis for full-core reactor problems.

An in-depth case study of the current …