MOLTEN SALT SELECTION | REACTOR DESIGN
spearhead Gen IV reactor tech
Using AI to
The vast complexities of molten salt reactors are being made simpler by a new machine learning model. Argonne National Laboratory scientists Jicheng Guo and Ganesh Sivaraman tell NEI how their solution learns without teaching
ALTHOUGH MOLTEN SALT REACTOR DESIGNS are attracting considerable attention as a fourth-generation technology with considerable advantages the technology represents challenges too. The salt used to transport fuel around the reactor and
provide heat transfer must possess specific characteristics. Reactor designers are looking for a combination of the right temperature, the right density, and viscosity, which are all related to how the liquid salt is going to be circulated and used to get the heat from the reactions out. There are still a lot of unknowns in the molten salt reactor area, like for example the different properties of salts of different compositions. Indeed, there are tens of thousands of different blends and combinations of salts that could be mixed at different proportions and used in reactor applications. This makes the task of choosing the ideal salt combination incredibly complex. Now, to help pinpoint the right types of molten salts,
researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOEs) Argonne National Laboratory are deploying in-house
developed artificial intelligence technology to explore the characteristics of molten salt combinations in a bid to identify the most promising for further research. “The reason that we have different salt compositions and mix them is that they have got different properties. Another factor is that in the reactor environment, when we introduce uranium fuel this is a dynamic process affecting uranium concentrations because the process is prompting decay. Over time the uranium concentration will change and that will affect the salt properties as well. When you change the composition, the properties will change, like density, viscosity, heat capacity, which are all very important for the nuclear reactor operations,” explains Jicheng Guo, a Chemical Engineer at the Chemical and Fuel Cycle Technologies Division of Argonne National Laboratory. Unravelling the liquid structure of multicomponent
molten salts is challenging due to the difficulty of conducting high-temperature diffraction experiments and interpreting the results. U
Above: The Argonne National Laboratory site
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