Molten Salt Reactor research at LSM/NES

MSR research at LSM has 3 main justifications:

1.education purpose (2 PhD & 8 MSc internal students,  3 PhD & 4 other guests)
2.technology monitoring (it is the most revolutionary GIV system)
3.novel research topics (liquid phase of the fuel introduces many challenges)

Two major research objectives in NES:

1.safety (tight multi-physics coupling / H2020 SAMOFAR project)
2.sustainability

MSR is rather a class of reactors than a single design.

 

Major achievements:

1.Development of MSR fuel cycle routine EQL0D to solve several coupled burnup matrixes.
[Hombourger et al., submitted to Ann. Nucl. Energy, 2018]
 
2.Assessment of fuel cycle sustainability for many different MSR designs (moderated, fast, Th-U, U-Pu, …). [Hombourger et al., Nucl. Sci. Rad. Sci. 1, 011009, 2015]
 
3.Proposal of Breed & Burn cycle published 6 month prior the Terrapower (B. Gates) revealed their
B&B MSR research. [Hombourger et al., ICAPP conference in Nice, 2015]