The structure of the molten salt (LiF)0.465(NaF)0.115(KF)0.42 (FLiNaK), a potential coolant for molten salt nuclear reactors, has been studied by ab initio molecular dynamics simulations and neutron total scattering experiments. We find that the salt retains well-defined short-range structural correlations out to approximately 9 Angstroms at typical reactor operating temperatures. The experimentally determined pair distribution function can be described with quantitative accuracy by the molecular dynamics simulations. These results indicate that the essential ionic interactions are properly captured by the simulations, providing a launching point for future studies of FLiNaK and other molten salts for nuclear reactor applications.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2003.07462,
title = {The Structure of Molten FLiNaK},
author = {Benjamin A. Frandsen and Stella D. Nickerson and Austin D. Clark and Andrew Solano and Raju Baral and Johnny Williams and Jörg Neuefeind and Matthew Memmott},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.07462},
year = {2020}
}