Education and Training Series #9: Molten Salt Reactors-MSR
Part of a webinar series hosted by the GIF Education and Training Working Group since 2016.
Who should attend?
Policymakers, industry professionals, regulators, researchers, students, the general public.
About the "GIF Education and Training" Webinars
These webinars, organised by the GIF Education and Training Working Group are streamed live monthly. The recordings and slide decks are accessible after the webinar on this website. These webinars cover a very broad range of technical and policy related topics. At the end of 2023 they have been viewed by more than 15000 people (approximately half of the views during the live streams and the other half views being of the archives on the public GIF website). In total, the GIF webinars have reached Generation IV enthusiasts, scientists, and engineers in more than 80 countries.
These webinars are organised and hosted by the GIF Education and Training Working Group (ETWG).
About this Webinar
Liquid-fueled reactors exhibit unusual and interesting properties in terms of operation and safety compared to solid-fueled reactors, requesting a revision of some well-known conception and safety rules. In this webinar, such characteristics of the Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs) will be presented, together with the past and current R&D activities. The concepts studied in the frame of the Generation-IV international collaboration will be briefly described, and the presentation will then focus on the concept of Molten Salt Fast Reactor (MSFR), reactor based on a fast spectrum and studied since almost a decade mainly by calculations and determination of basic physical and chemical properties, initially at CNRS in France and now more largely in the European Union. The main design choices and characteristics of this MSFR concept will be explained and discussed including transient simulations, chemistry and material issues, safety analysis, research roadmap and laboratory scale experiments.
Presentation made during the webinar
Meet the presenter
Prof. Elsa Merle is the director of the Master's Program in Reactor Physics and Nuclear Engineering at the PHELMA engineering school of Grenoble Institute of Technology, France. She is also working, as a research staff member, at the Laboratory for Subatomic Physics and Cosmology of Grenoble. Since 2000, she has been actively involved with the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) programs dedicated to the conceptual design of innovative Generation IV reactors. As such, she is contributing to various studies and validations of the concept of Molten Salt Reactors and more specifically since 2008 on the definition and optimization of the concept of Molten Salt Fast Reactor (MSFR). Dr. Merle is in charge of the work-package 1 “Integral safety approach and system integration” of the Euratom project SAMOFAR of Horizon2020, and she represents CNRS at the GIF steering committee on Molten Salt Reactors.