Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs) are one category of advanced nuclear reactors receiving increased attention in recent years, as evidenced by significant investments from both government and private industry into MSR technology development. The attractiveness of MSR technology predominately stems from inherent safety features including low pressure operation, passive decay heat cooling, and large negative temperature coefficient of reactivity. A key component of any nuclear reactor is the off-gas system. MSR designs present a unique set of off-gas related challenges due to the fuel being in liquid form. In general, MSR designs will involve an inert cover-gas, such as argon or helium, that is over the liquid fuel. Both stationary and flowing conditions are possible. Volatile species, such as noble gas fission products, and salt aerosols may be partitioned into the cover-gas under both normal and off-normal operating conditions. An off-gas treatment system is therefore required to ensure that radioactive species are not released under any condition. It is expected that although several off-gas treatment systems for MSRs may look similar to those currently in operating reactor designs, there will be differences. A key aspect of developing and deploying these off-gas treatment technologies is instrumentation for monitoring the concentrations of species in the off-gas before and after treatment. Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) is one of several promising analytical techniques for MSR off-gas monitoring. This contribution will give an overview of MSR off-gas monitoring requirements as well as recent progress on the use of LIBS off-gas monitoring system for MSRs. This will include results from real-time monitoring of various surrogate aerosol streams relevant to MSRs.

Analysis of aerosols and gases relevant to molten salt reactor off-gas monitoring using laser induced breakdown spectroscopy

ACS Fall 2020 Virtual Meeting

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.