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 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 15–18, 2026
Phoenix, AZ|Arizona Grand Resort & Spa
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.
W. P. Barthold, J. C. Beitel
Nuclear Technology | Volume 40 | Number 2 | September 1978 | Pages 138-148
Technical Paper | Tutorial Materials/Design Interaction in Nuclear System / Material | doi.org/10.13182/NT78-A26710
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The impact of swelling and creep phenomena, as expressed in the various Nuclear Systems Materials Handbook correlations and their updates, on liquid-metal fast breeder reactor (LMFBR) fuel assembly duct design and LMFBR performance was investigated. As more data on irradiation-induced creep and swelling became available, the predicted creep and swelling rates increased. This leads to increases in interassembly gaps required for the same duct life. Penalties in breeding ratio, doubling times, and fuel cycle cost are the result of the increased interassembly gaps. The most significant penalties are encountered when the updated correlations on creep and swelling are used to update the duct life calculation. To compensate for increases in predicted duct dilation, the duct lifetime has to be reduced significantly.