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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.
I. Lindholm, E. Pekkarinen, H. Sjövall
Nuclear Technology | Volume 112 | Number 1 | October 1995 | Pages 42-57
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A15850
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Selected core reflooding situations were investigated in the case of a Finnish boiling water reactor with three severe accident analysis computer codes (MAAP, MELCOR, and SCDAP/RELAP5). The unmitigated base case accident scenario was a 10% steam-line break without water makeup to the reactor pressure vessel initially. The pumping of water to the core was started with the auxiliary feed water system when the maximum fuel cladding temperature reached 1500 K. The auxiliary feedwater system pumps water (temperature 303 K) through the core spray spargers (core spray) on the top of the core and through feedwater nozzles to the downcomer (downcomer injection). The scope of the study was restricted to cases where the overheated core was still geometrically intact at the start of the reflooding. The following different core reflooding situations were investigated: 1. auxiliary feedwater injection to core spray (45 kg/s) 2. auxiliary feedwater injection to downcomer (45 kg/s) 3. auxiliary feedwater injection to downcomer (45 kg/s) and to core spray (45 kg/s) 4. no reflooding of the core. All the three codes predicted debris formation after the water addition, and in all MAAP and MELCOR reflooding results the core was quenched. The major difference between the code predictions was in the amount of H2 produced, though the trends in H2 production were similar. Additional steam production during the quenching process accelerated the oxidation in the unquenched parts of the core. This result is in accordance with several experimental observations.