Research on Coupling of Neutronics and Thermal-hydraulics for Fuel Assembly of Thorium Molten Salt Reactor Moderated by Zirconium Hydride Rod

Based on Monte Carlo particle transport code MCNP and self-developed sub-channel thermal-hydraulic code SubTH, a code system MCNP-SubTH coupling neutronics with thermal-hydraulics was developed, which was suitable for steady state analysis for a thorium molten salt reactor moderated by zirconium hydride rod (ZrH-MSR). It solved the difficulties in the neutronics and thermal-hydraulics coupling code due to different mesh types, and has a general validity. MCNP-SubTH exchanged data between MCNP and SubTH by an external coupling. The power density field obtained from MCNP was provided as a SubTH solution file to give a user-specified source term, and then the density and temperature field from SubTH was updated and as a new MCNP input file by MCNP-SubTH to realize iterative calculation. The accuracy of MCNP-SubTH was verified by each relatively independent module. MCNP-SubTH application in the fuel assembly of ZrH-MSR was studied, and its validity was verified.