Molten salt setup analysis
Résumé
The CEA is developing safer and more modular next-generation reactors. Among the diversity of new reactors considered, there is a family that would use molten salts as coolant (MSR). This solution offers many advantages but requires solving some problems related to the corrosion of metals by salts.
The corrosion study can be quite long and would be considerably accelerated if an in-situ measurement of the chemical composition of the salts was available. Because LIBS technic is an all optical sensor, it would make it possible to achieve this. However, the constraints related to temperature, inertness of the salts, narrowness of access make accessibility non-trivial. The work will present the optical study that has been done as well as the stability study of the signal obtained with the selected setup on a simulating liquid medium.