Preliminary Studies for a Molten-Salt Reactor with Fuel Elements

In many molten-salt reactor designs, liquid fuel circulates through the core, heat exchanger, and pump.It may lead to an unstable reactivity level, influenced by fuel density variations due to irregularities in fuel flow.In this paper, we consider a design concept with multiple elements consisting of structures filled with liquid fuel salt and cooled by inert salt.This approach may help to avoid reactivity instabilities but may limit the power density and require salts with high solubility of actinides because of increased neutron absorption by the structures.