Kinetics, dynamics, and neutron noise in stationary molten salt reactors

Book chapter, 2024

This chapter discusses the statics, kinetics, and dynamics of molten salt reactors in a simple model that allows analytical solutions. Due to this, and the introduction of some further limiting cases, the chapter offers substantial insight into and understanding of the physics and the neutronic behavior of molten salt systems with circulating fuel. After a discussion of the properties of the model and the limiting cases for the static equations, a treatment of space-time transients is introduced, and some limiting cases are solved explicitly. Thereafter the kinetic and dynamic response of the reactor is derived by calculating the space-frequency-dependent neutron fluctuations (neutron noise) induced by small stationary perturbations of the system parameters. The validity of the point kinetic approximation and the calculation of the point kinetic component of the noise are discussed. Finally, the neutron noise induced by various perturbations propagating with the circulating fuel is calculated and discussed.