Demonstration of the Advanced Dynamic System Modeling Tool TRANSFORM in a Molten Salt Reactor Application via a Model of the Molten Salt Demonstration Reactor

Abstract

Liquid-fueled nuclear reactors, particularly molten salt reactors (MSRs), have recently gained significant interest in the advanced reactor community. As with all reactors, modeling and simulation are critical to advanced reactor design and licensing and will be required for MSR deployment. However, there are significant gaps in existing simulation capabilities for MSRs, particularly with the unique challenges of liquid-fueled systems (e.g., fission product transport). Furthermore, advanced reactor designers require near-term tools that are readily modifiable to perform design and analysis, including the ability to extend their analysis beyond the primary system to auxiliary systems. Transient Simulation Framework of Reconfigurable Models (TRANSFORM), a Modelica-based, system modeling library developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is an advanced tool that can help meet some of the near-term needs of the advanced reactor community. This paper describes advanced system modeling criteria and presents TRANSFORM to the advanced reactor community by demonstration of system modeling capabilities and support of advanced analysis workflows, i.e., the Risk Analysis Virtual Environment (RAVEN) framework from Idaho National Laboratory, using the liquid-fueled Molten Salt Demonstration Reactor (MSDR) as a reference design.

Keywords:

• Liquid-fuel molten salt reactor
• system model
• TRANSFORM
• Modelica
• sensitivity analysis

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Advanced Reactor Technology Molten Salt Reactor Campaign. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the DOE.

Notes

^a https://github.com/ORNL-Modelica/TRANSFORM-Library.

^b https://www.modelica.org/publications/ModelicaConference.

^c https://fmi-standard.org/tools/.