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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.
K. Michael Goff, Alfred Schneider, James E. Battles
Nuclear Technology | Volume 102 | Number 3 | June 1993 | Pages 331-340
Technical Paper | Enrichment and Reprocessing System | doi.org/10.13182/NT93-A17032
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The reprocessing of spent fuel from the Integral Fast Reactor is to be accomplished with a pyrochemical process employing molten LiCl-KCl salt covering a pool of cadmium. An examination of this system demonstrates that cadmium metal is soluble to a small extent in this salt and that it diffuses through the salt covering and vaporizes at the surface. The cadmium is soluble in the salt because of either chemical or physical solubility, both of which are dependent on the salt’s surface tension. Mixing increases the vaporization rate of the cadmium by increasing its transport to the salt surface. The cadmium vapors can therefore be reduced by decreasing the mixing conditions, by choosing a salt with a higher surface tension so that the cadmium is less soluble, or by decreasing the temperature of the system, thereby lowering the vapor pressure of the cadmium.