MOlten Salt Actinide Recycler and

Ignatiev, V. et al. 2007. Progress in Development of Li, Be, Na/F Molten Salt Actinide Recycler and Transmuter Concept. In Proceedings of the ICAPP 2007, Nice, France. 

MSR developments in Russia on the Molten Salt Actinide Recycler and Transmuter aim to be used as efficient burners of transuranic waste from spent UOX and MOX LWR fuel without any uranium and thorium support and also with it. Other advanced reactor concepts are being studied, which use the liquid salt technology as a primary coolant for fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactors, and coated particle fuels similar to high-temperature gas-cooled reactors. 

MOSART Molten Salt Actinide Recycler and Transmuter... 

Afonichkin, V., Bovet, A., Gnidoi, I., Khokhlov, V., Lizin, A., Merzlyakov, A., Osipenko, A., Sannikov, I., Shishkin, V., Subbotin, V., Surenkov, A., Toropov, A., Uglov, V., Zagnitko, A., 2014. Molten salt actinide recycler and transforming system without and with Th-U support fuel cycle flexibihty and key materials properties. Annals of Nuclear Energy 64, 408-420. 

Many efforts have also been focused on the safety analysis of MSRs. A safety analysis code was developed by establishing a kinetic model to consider the flow effects of the fuel salt coupled with a simplified heat transfer model in the core. The safety characteristics of the MOlten Salt Actinide Recycler and Transmuter (MOSART) were... 

Ignatiev, I., et al., 2014. Molten salt actinide recycler transforming system without and with Th-U support fuel cycle flexibility and key material properties. Annals of Nuclear Energy 64, 408-420. 

The salt purification process is illustrated in Fig. XXIV-9. A fraction of the molten salt is removed from the electrolysis cell and is placed in contact with lithium-rich liquid cadmium. By the exchange reaction between Li and salt-borne TRU and the fission products, the less stable species in the molten salt are transferred to the liquid Cd. Generally, U and TRU are less stable than the rare earth metals and are first transferred to the liquid Cd. The Li concentration in the liquid Cd must be increased to decrease the contamination of the molten salt by TRU. Then, concentration of the fission products is also increased in the liquid Cd. After a forward reductive extraction process, the decontaminated salt with the salt-borne fission products passes through zeolite beds that replace nearly all of the alkali, alkaline earth, and rare earth metals with K and Li by ion exchange. The residual actinides in the molten salt are also adsorbed in the zeolite. The molten salt leaving the zeolite is free of actinides and fission product ions. The purified salt is mixed with an oxidizer such as CdCb and is contacted with liquid Cd that contains U and TRU by the forward reductive extraction process. CdCb will contain U and TRU to be oxidized. U and TRU are transferred to the molten salt from the liquid Cd. The molten salt with U and TRU is recycled to the electrolysis cell. The liquid metal is also recycled to the forward reductive extraction process. 

SMART-MSFR Safety of Minor Actinides Recycling and Transmuting in Molten Salt Fast Reactor... 

The following example is an MSR plant with a power level of 1,000 MWe, which has been proposed as a reference GEN-IV MSR in GIF aiming at actinide burning with continuous recycling (US DOE and GIF 2002) (see O Fig. 58.15). The reactor can use U or Th as a fertile fuel dissolved as fluorides in the molten salt. Due to the thermal or epithermal spectrum of the fluoride MSR, Th is favorable for achieving the highest conversion performance. It operates above 700°C of coolant outlet temperature, which affords improved thermal efficiency, i.e., 40—50%. The coolant outlet temperature can he improved up to 850°C for the purpose of hydrogen production. 

Recycling of refractory metals from wastes is an important issue today since they are in relatively low amount in the earth s crust and it should really be a substantial economy of expensive raw materials and also of energy. Molten salt electrolysis is proved to be appropriate to this function which can be assimilated in the case of metallic wastes to electrorefining. Today, waste treatment of other transition metals like actinides or lanthanides is a reality in the nuclear field, while other strategic elements such as silicon are expected to be recovered with a molten salt technology. 

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