ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Aug 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
October 2026
Nuclear Technology
September 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2026
Latest News
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.
Steven J. Piet, Brent W. Dixon, Jacob J. Jacobson, Gretchen E. Matthern, David E. Shropshire
Nuclear Technology | Volume 173 | Number 3 | March 2011 | Pages 227-238
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycles and Their Characteristics | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A11658
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nothing in life is static, so why compare fuel cycle options using only static, equilibrium analyses? Competitive industry looks at how new technology options might displace existing technologies and change how existing systems work. So too, our years of performing dynamic simulations of advanced nuclear fuel cycle options provide insights into how they might work and how one might transition from the current once-through fuel cycle. This paper summarizes those insights within the context of the 2005 objectives and goals of what was then the U.S. Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI). The intent here is not to compare options, assess options versus those objectives and goals, nor recommend changes to those objectives and goals. (The specific options change over time; the objective in this paper is to look for more generic insights.) We organize what we have learned from dynamic simulations in the context of the AFCI objectives for waste management, proliferation resistance, uranium utilization, and economics. Thus, we do not merely describe "lessons learned" from dynamic simulations but attempt to answer the "so what" question by using this context; i.e., how do the lessons learned matter relative to goals and objectives not just to technological observations? The analyses have been performed using the Verifiable Fuel Cycle Simulation of Nuclear Fuel Cycle Dynamics (VISION). We observe that the 2005 objectives and goals do not address many of the inherently dynamic discriminators among advanced fuel cycle options and transitions thereof.