A Brief History of Kinetics Methods and the Relationship with Molten Salt Reactor Development

SPEAKER: Zander Mausolff Manager, Nuclear Safety & Deputy Project Engineer on MCRE DATE/TIME: MON, 10/21/2024 – 3:00PM TO 4:00PM LOCATION: 3105 ETCHEVERRY HALL

Abstract:

The understanding of the time-dependent behavior many reactor systems has been surprisingly well predicted by a compact set of equations referred to as the point kinetics. The theory of the point kinetics and their validity has been investigated since the 1950s. In the development of new reactor concepts understanding the time-dependent behavior of nuclear reactors and how test the kinetics of a new system of significance. In the development of the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment a number of novel kinetics experiments were developed and demonstrated. These approaches are being employed in a new reactor development underway in the Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment. An overview will be given as to some of nuances in employing these kinetics testing approaches as well as the underlying theory. Some concluding remarks will be given broadly as to the importance of testing on other future reactors besides molten salt systems.

Bio:

Dr. Zander Mausolff is the MCFR Nuclear Safety Manager and Deputy Project Engineer for MCRE at TerraPower. This position oversees the safety basis development for the Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment as well as design efforts across nuclear, thermal-hydraulics, and laboratory testing. He has worked on system level transient analysis of Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) systems on both the analysis and the methods side. He has done other work on higher-fidelity transient analysis methods to assess experiments performed in Transient Reactor Test Facility. His dissertation work focused on the development of a system level code to simulate the dynamics of MSRs. He is familiar with basic thermal-fluid modeling and experienced in nuclear kinetics methodologies from modified point kinetics schemes to the improved quasi-static method. Furthermore, he is familiar with numerical solver techniques to solve the underlying system of equations and the various discretization schemes employed typically in thermal-hydraulics codes. He has spent time outside of nuclear as well, working on the code development of a large scale fluid dynamics solver for environmental applications.