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LLNL, Ampera partner to develop thorium-based TRISO fuel
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has formed a strategic partnership with Ampera to develop the company’s nuclear fuel concept through a project named THUNDER, for Thorium Unimodal Droplet Ejection for Reactors.
The focus of THUNDER is fabricating TRISO made with kernels of thorium rather than the usual uranium. LLNL and Ampera will evaluate and optimize liquid metal–jetting technology to produce highly uniform, spherical kernels of thorium-232 for later processing into TRISO fuel.
C. M. Sommer, W. M. Stacey, B. Petrovic
Nuclear Technology | Volume 172 | Number 1 | October 2010 | Pages 48-59
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT10-A10881
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A fuel cycle analysis was performed for the SABR transmutation reactor concept, using the ERANOS fast reactor physics code. SABR is a sodium-cooled, transuranic (TRU)-Zr-fueled, subcritical fast reactor driven by a tokamak fusion neutron source. Three different four-batch reprocessing fuel cycles, in which all the TRUs from spent nuclear fuel discharged from light water reactors are fissioned to >90% (by recycling four times), was examined. The total fuel residence time in the reactor was limited in these three cycles by a radiation damage limit (100, 200, or 300 displacements per atom) to the cladding material. In the fourth cycle the fuel residence time was determined by trying to achieve 90% burnup in a once-through cycle without reprocessing.