Coupled Reactor Kinetics and Heat Transfer Model for Fluoride Salt-Cooled High-Temperature Reactor Transient Analysis

Coupled reactor kinetics and heat transfer models have been developed at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) to study Pebble-Bed, Fluoride-salt-cooled, High-temperature Reactors (PB-FHRs) transient behaviors. This paper discusses a coupled point kinetics model and a two-dimensional diffusion model. The former is based on the point kinetics equations with six groups of delayed neutrons and the lumped capacitance heat transfer equations. To account for the reflector effect on neutron lifetime, additional (fictional) groups of delayed neutrons are added in the point kinetics equations to represent the thermalized neutrons coming back from the reflectors. The latter is based on coupled multi-group neutron diffusion and finite element heat transfer model. Multi-group cross sections and diffusion coefficients are generated using the Monte Carlo code Serpent and defined as input in COMSOL 5.0.