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Texas A&M welcomes uranium conversion research
The Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) has signed a research agreement with Quantum Leap Energy (QLE) “to advance and de-risk the commercial production of high-purity uranium hexafluoride (UF6).”
QLE is an Austin, Texas–based subsidiary of ASP Isotopes (ASPI), which is developing an isotope enrichment platform for applications in nuclear energy, nuclear medicine, and semiconductors. QLE specializes in the uranium conversion step of the nuclear fuel cycle—the conversion of yellowcake uranium concentrate (U3O8) into UF6 prior to enrichment.
Yeongshin Jeong, Koroush Shirvan, Michael Buric
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 5 | May 2023 | Pages 868-885
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2102388
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This work establishes a generic multiphysics tool for liquid-fueled molten salt reactors (LFMSRs) to select key installation locations and specify the expected operating temperature range for the development of advanced instrumentation and control systems, particularly distributed temperature sensors using fiber optics. A commercial computation fluid dynamics package (STAR-CCM+) is used to formulate a neutronics and thermal-hydraulic coupled solver, showing good agreement with a recent benchmark problem developed for evaluating the coupling methodology of neutronics and thermal hydraulics. The multiphysics model is then applied to the reference molten chloride salt fast reactor (MCFR) design under development by TerraPower based on publicly available information. The available two-dimensional axisymmetric model for the reactor core is used for coupling calculations, and system component details are leveraged using the lumped method to complete the energy balance. The dynamic responses of the MCFR model are investigated during operational transients, such as unprotected loss-of-flow and uniform perturbation scenarios. Maximum temperature and local temperature distributions are characterized during unprotected loss of flow and unprotected loss of heat sink events. The thermal responses of the fuel salt and core components are analyzed from induced perturbation of the system parameters, such as the flow rate and the heat sink capacity. The results motivate the use of continuous monitoring of the temperature variation in real time along the reflector region with the use of fiber optics to validate the multiphysics code to support a reactor’s licensing basis, as well as to support the structural longevity and improve safety in LFMSRs.