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Abstract
S.J. de Zwaan, B. Boer, D. Lathouwers, and J.L. Kloosterman,
Static Design of a Liquid Salt-cooled Pebble Bed Reactor (LSPBR),
Annals of Nuclear Energy, 34:83-92, 2007.
A renewed interest has been raised for liquid salt cooled nuclear reactors. The excellent heat
transfer properties of liquid salt coolants provide several benefits, like lower fuel temperatures,
higher average coolant temperature, increased core power density and better decay heat removal,
and thus higher achievable core power. In order to benefit from the on-line refueling capability
of a pebble bed reactor, the Liquid Salt Pebble Bed Reactor (LSPBR) is proposed. This is a high
temperature pebble-bed reactor with a fuel design similar to existing HTRs, but using a liquid
salt as coolant. In this paper, the selection criteria for the liquid salt coolant are described.
Based on its neutronic properties, LiF-BeF2 (flibe) was selected for the LSPBR. Two designs of the
LSPBR were considered: a cylindrical core and an annular core with a graphite inner reflector.
Coupled neutronic thermal-hydraulic calculations were performed to obtain the steady state power
distribution and the corresponding fuel temperature distribution. Calculations were performed to
investigate the decay heat removal capability in a protected loss-of-forced cooling accident. The
maximum allowable power that can be produced with the LSPBR is hereby determined.
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