Hydrogen production via water splitting process in a molten-salt fusion breeder

Abstract

This study presents the hydrogen production and fissile breeding potentials of Force-Free Helical Reactor (FFHR) fueled with the molten-salt mixtures. The sulfur-iodine (S-I) thermochemical water-splitting and high-temperature electrolysis cycles, which are the most promising water-splitting cycles, are selected to produce large-scale and pure hydrogen. The XSDRNPM/SCALE4.4a neutron transport code is used for the neutronic calculations. The analyses have been performed individually for four different molten-salt mixtures, (pure FLiBe, mixture of FLiBe and ThF4, mixture of FLiBe and UF4, and mixture of FLiBe, ThF4 and (UF4)-U-233). The numerical results bring out that the considered molten-salt fusion breeder reactor has a high neutronic performance and can produce a considerable amount of the hydrogen production (up to 40 kg/s), as well as the fissile fuel (up to 2.5 tons/yr). (C) 2010 Professor T. Nejat Veziroglu. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.