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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.
Richard N. Oehlberg, Harold H. Scott
Nuclear Technology | Volume 40 | Number 3 | October 1978 | Pages 248-260
Technical Paper | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT78-A26723
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A partitioning of a hypothetical pressurized water reactor loss-of-coolant accident time history into pre-reflood and reflood periods allowed a study of reflood parameter effects without a well-defined knowledge of the complex blowdown history. Values for the initial reflood fuel rod temperature profiles, reflood cladding-to-coolant heat transfer coefficient (HTC), decay heat, and initial reflood hot node hoop strain were chosen to parametrically describe the initial reflood condition of the fuel rod. The sensitivity of the reflood peak cladding temperature to decay heat was constant; the sensitivity to the gap conductance was only a function of the initial reflood hoop strain. The sensitivity to decay heat and the reflood HTC ramp was greater for the lower initial reflood centerline temperature case.