[2O11-14] Advanced Reactor

[2O14] A study of tube inclination and jacket plate effect on freeze plug performance in molten salt reactors

*Ilham Muhammad¹, Tomio Okawa¹ (1. UEC)

Keywords:Molten salt reactor, Freeze plug, Inclination, jacket

Numerical investigations were performed to analyze the tube inclination effect on freeze plugs' solidification and melting process in molten salt reactors (MSRs). Furthermore, a novel design of freeze plug systems, the jacket method, was proposed to induce heat transfer from the reactor vessel to the frozen plug faster than the normal tube. Decreasing the inclination from the vertical tube to the horizontal would affect the freeze plug shape in the solidification process. In the melting process, a lower inclination accelerates the melting process, thus reducing the opening time. Adding a small copper plate outside the pipe as a jacket has a small impact on the solidification process. Moreover, adding the jacket will reduce the opening time by around 20%.