Analysis of the Void Reactivity Effect in the Molten Salt Fast Reactor: Impact of the Helium Bubbling System

The Molten Salt Fast Reactor is a fast-spectrum molten salt reactor under development in the framework of the European H2020 SAMOFAR Project (http://samofar.eu/). Among the design peculiarities, this circulating fuel reactor features a helium bubbling system aimed at removing on-line gaseous fission products, and metallic particles as well. From a modelling point of view, the presence of helium bubbles in the core needs to be assessed both from a neutronics and thermal-hydraulics point of view. In this paper, the attention is paid to the first aspect, analysing the void reactivity effect induced by the bubbles by means of a Monte Carlo and an SP3 neutron transport approach. Since the distribution of helium bubbles is not uniform in the core but strongly depends on the location of their injection and extraction, a coupling scheme between Serpent 2 and OpenFOAM codes is adopted for the Monte Carlo analysis. In this way, the Monte Carlo code Serpent 2 is provided with a real bubble distribution calculated by means of a two-phase Euler-Euler solver implemented in OpenFOAM. The results put in evidence the difference arising when a uniform and a real distribution of bubbles is considered in a Monte Carlo calculation as well as the difference between the two neutronics approaches herein adopted.