Preliminary neutron study of a thorium-based molten salt energy amplifier

Present designs for molten salt thermal reactors require complex online processing systems, which are technologically challenging, while an accelerator-driven subcritical molten salt system can operate without an online processing system, simplifying the design. Previous designs of accelerator-driven subcritical systems usually required very high-power proton accelerators(>10MW).In this research, a proton accelerator is used to drive a thorium-based molten salt fast energy amplifier(TMSFEA)that improves the neutron efficiency of the system. The research results show that TMSFEA can achieve a longterm stable state for more than 30 years with a rated power of 300 MW and a stabilizing effective multiplication factor(k(eff)) without any online processing. In this study, a physical design of an integrated molten salt energy amplifier with an initial energy gain of 117 was accomplished. According to the burn-up calculation, a molten salt energy amplifier with the rated power of 300 MW(th) should be able to operate continuously for nearly 40 years using a 1 Ge V proton beam below 4 m A during the lifetime. By the end of the life cycle, the energy gain can still reach 76,and^(233) U contributes 70.9% of the total fission rate, which indicates the efficient utilization of the thorium fuel.

Design of a novel correlative reflection electron microscope for in-situ real-time chemical analysis

A novel instrument that integrates reflection high energy electron diffraction(RHEED),electron energy loss spectroscopy(EELS),and imaging is designed and simulated.Since it can correlate the structural,elemental,and spatial information of the same surface region via the simultaneously acquired patterns of RHEED,EELS,and energy-filtered electron microscopy,it is named correlative reflection electron microscopy(c-REM).Our simulation demonstrates that the spatial resolution of this c-REM is lower than 50 nm,which meets the requirements for in-situ monitoring the structural and chemical evolution of surface in advanced material.