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Quality is key: Investing in advanced nuclear research for tomorrow’s grid
As the energy sector faces mounting pressure to grow at an unprecedented pace while maintaining reliability and affordability, nuclear technology remains an essential component of the long-term solution. Southern Company stands out among U.S. utilities for its proactive role in shaping these next-generation systems—not just as a future customer, but as a hands-on innovator.
M. Scott Greenwood, Benjamin R. Betzler, A. Lou Qualls, Junsoo Yoo, Cristian Rabiti
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 3 | March 2020 | Pages 478-504
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1627124
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Liquid-fueled nuclear reactors, particularly molten salt reactors (MSRs), have recently gained significant interest in the advanced reactor community. As with all reactors, modeling and simulation are critical to advanced reactor design and licensing and will be required for MSR deployment. However, there are significant gaps in existing simulation capabilities for MSRs, particularly with the unique challenges of liquid-fueled systems (e.g., fission product transport). Furthermore, advanced reactor designers require near-term tools that are readily modifiable to perform design and analysis, including the ability to extend their analysis beyond the primary system to auxiliary systems. Transient Simulation Framework of Reconfigurable Models (TRANSFORM), a Modelica-based, system modeling library developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is an advanced tool that can help meet some of the near-term needs of the advanced reactor community. This paper describes advanced system modeling criteria and presents TRANSFORM to the advanced reactor community by demonstration of system modeling capabilities and support of advanced analysis workflows, i.e., the Risk Analysis Virtual Environment (RAVEN) framework from Idaho National Laboratory, using the liquid-fueled Molten Salt Demonstration Reactor (MSDR) as a reference design.