SUMMARY

The pursuit of Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) concepts by industry and academia has necessitated the development of utilities and resources suitable for MSR modeling and simulation. Evaluated reactor physics benchmark experiments are necessary for assessing the accuracy of a given code and nuclear data set to represent a reactor system. With MSR reactor physics benchmark experiments in short supply, available experimental MSR data must be utilized to support the licensing and research needs paramount to the commercialization of MSRs. Thus, the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE), an extension of the Molten Salt Reactor Program led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1960s, should be utilized to the fullest extent for the creation of evaluated reactor physics benchmark experiments. The primary outcome of this work is the development of such a benchmark experiment using available data from the U-233-fueled zero-power test in the MSRE. An evaluation report of this benchmark experiment based on the dissertation will be submitted to the International Reactor Physics Evaluation (IRPhE) project committee upon completion of this dissertation for review and potential inclusion in the IRPhE handbook. This submission aims to address the scarcity of available experimental MSR data for benchmarking reactor physics and neutronics codes, as the zero-power U-235 criticality experiment for the MSRE is currently the only evaluated MSR benchmark problem in the IRPhE handbook.