ANALYSIS OF BURNABLE POISON DOPING ON FUEL MOLTEN MIXTURE FOR MOLTEN SALT REACTOR (MSR) FUJI-12
Hilarius Adiwarna(b), Cici Wulandari(a,b), Syeilendra Pramuditya(a,b), Sidik Permana(a,b*), Syaiful Bakhri (c)

a)Nuclear Physics & Biophysics Research Division, Department of Physics, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Institut Teknologi, Bandung, Indonesia
b)Department of Physics, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Institut Teknologi, Bandung, Indonesia
c)Research Center for Nuclear Material and Radioactive Waste Technology (PRTBNLR), Research Organization for Nuclear Energy, National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), South Tangerang 15314, Indonesia
*psidik[at]itb.ac.id

Abstract

Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) are a type of power generator that supports Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by producing clean, affordable, and climate-friendly energy. This study simulated the MSR FUJI-12 to determine suitable SRAC 2006 parameters with a PIJ module for cell calculation and CITATION module for core calculation. The simulation results showed an initial keff of 1.013046 for a U-233 F4 concentration of 0.22%, with a deviation of 0.0354% from the target of 1.0134. However, the final keff remained below 1, at 0.9455, prompting an increase in the U-233 F4 concentration to 0.28%. One of the challenges identified was the high Power Peaking Factor (PPF) of 3.49, that may damage the inside coating of reactor chamber. Using Protactinium as burnable poison and actinide producer to stabilize the keff, it was concluded that the doping on molten mixture is 0.003% to avoid uncriticality on MSR FUJI-12. However, the impact of the doping is unsignificant to the PPF. It is then proposed using other type of burnable poison, such as Americium (Am) and Gadolinium (Gd). However, as it was known that only Protactinium that produces burnable actinide to fuel the core, the impact is negligeble except for the Gd gas, as its doping is enough to decrease the initial keff and to increase the conversion ratio (CR) in MSR from 0.835 to 0.933.

Keywords: Burnable poison, MSR FUJI-12, Protactinium, U-233 F4

Topic: Innovative Nuclear Energy Systems