Depletion dependency of molten salt reactor dynamics

Fast dynamic simulations of full reactor systems at reduced fidelity are essential for prototyping and improving these complex machines. This paper presents a publicly available nodal dynamic model of the Molten Salt Demonstration Reactor (MSDR) implemented in MATLAB Simulink. The presented model is an iteration of a previously-published MSDR nodal dynamic model; capabilities introduced into this version include dynamic decay heat production and removal along with a novel depletion accounting module that affords full life cycle simulations. Factorization of the transient progression time and a depletion time is a key feature of this method. The model is intended to be used as a first-order engineering estimation model and a demonstration for method full life cycle evaluation of such molten salt reactor systems. Several normal and off-normal transients are evaluated along the full life cycle and discussed. Parameter sensitivity methodology is extended to depletion dependency and demonstrated on two example sensitivity studies.