ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nucl. Eng.
Sec. Nuclear Reactor Design
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnuen.2025.1617048
This article is part of the Research TopicEnsuring Accuracy: Verification and Validation of High-Fidelity Tools for Advanced Nuclear Reactor SimulationsView all articles
Comparison of Spatial Dynamics and Point Kinetics Approaches in Multiphysics Modeling of the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Physics, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark
- 2Idaho National Laboratory (DOE), Idaho Falls, Idaho, United States
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In this work, we present validation test results of fully coupled neutronics and thermal-hydraulics models of the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) against experimental data of the zero power pump transients and the natural circulation tests at low power. To capture the strong coupling between neutronics and thermalhydraulics due to fuel circulation, and to account for the delayed neutron precursor (DNP) distribution, the porous media thermal-hydraulics solver Pronghorn was fully coupled to the spatial neutron dynamics code Griffin, which solves the neutron diffusion equation, and to the 0-D point kinetics solver Squirrel, using a 2-D homogenized representation of the MSRE. The validation test results show very good agreement with experimental data for both point kinetics and spatial dynamics simulations, capturing the strong feedback effect and DNP losses in the MSRE. The 0-D code Squirrel accurately predicted the time-dependent behavior in the MSRE given the steady-state spatial dynamics solution of Griffin.
Keywords: MSRE, PKE, DNP, Start-up, Coast-down
Received: 23 Apr 2025; Accepted: 17 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Pfahl, Jaradat, Tano, Freile, Walker and Ortensi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Philip Pfahl, Department of Physics, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark
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