OPEN AND TOTAL DRAINAGE TIME COMPARISON OF FROZEN FLIBE, FLINAK, AND MGCL2-KCL SALTS WHEN IMPLEMENTED TO A MULTIPLE HOLE FREEZE PLUG DESIGN FOR MOLTEN SALT REACTOR

• Main Author: Ardika Fadilah, Rizki
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/85606
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

After the nuclear accident occurred at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011, nuclear reactor safety become more worrying in the eye of the mass. To relief this worry, researchers from various countries began researching innovative safety technologies that could be applied to the design of new-generation reactors, one of which is the MSR. The MSR is a nuclear reactor that uses liquid salt as its coolant, and its fuel can also be in a liquid phase. These characteristics require the reactor to have a special drainage pipe that can remove salt and liquid fuel from the reactor vessel as a safety feature. The freeze plug is an innovative safety technology applied to this drainage pipe. One of the new designs can be seen in Frederique van Tuyll's thesis, where he presents a design with small holes. This design reduce the time needed to melt and froze molten salt compared to conventional designs. In this study, simulations will be conducted to observe the draining time and opening time of the freeze plug for several salts, namely, FLiBe, FLiNak, and MgCl2-KCl, with hole radius variations of 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 mm and Fanning friction factor variation for draining simulations are 0.0036, 0.009, and 0.002 for mentioned. Simulations will be performed using COMSOL with 2D axisymmetric geometry and for drainage time will be performed using python. The fastest opening and total draining result obtained in this study are 75.7 and 151.5 seconds for MgCl2-KCl.