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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.
Dale J. Merchant
Nuclear Technology | Volume 87 | Number 4 | December 1989 | Pages 1099-1105
Late Paper | TMI-2: Decontamination and Waste Management / Nuclear Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT89-A27700
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
External and internal radiation exposures to workers involved in the Three Mile Island Unit 2 recovery effort are reviewed. The 1979 accident left the plant with several areas with radiation environments that would not allow personnel entries for more than a few minutes without reaching the federal radiation limits. The recovery necessitated many unique tasks never before attempted in the U.S. commercial nuclear industry. Total commitment to the as-low-as-reasonablyachievable principle has helped keep individual and collective exposures acceptably low while allowing the recovery to proceed expeditiously. Since the initial worker actions to stabilize the plant and assess accident damage during 1979, there have been no individual exposures to radiation in excess of regulatory limits. Every individual annual dose since 1980 has been <0.04 Sv (4 rem), and the average annual worker dose has been comparable with the U.S. industry average. The annual collective exposures have been increasing since the initial plant stabilization. The relatively low collective doses from 1980 to 1983 reflect the technical planning and engineering phase of the recovery while conducting initial decontamination and dose reduction measures. Preliminary reactor vessel preparations and actual defueling commenced in 1984 and 1985. The collective doses in 1986 and 1987 correspond to the full-scale defueling and decontamination activities. The actual cumulative occupational dose through August 1988 was ∼53 person-Sv (5300 person-rem), and it is anticipated that <70 person-Sv (7000 personrem) will have been expended for the recovery. These collective doses are within the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s original estimate of 30 to 80 person-Sv (3000 to 8000 person-rem) and compare to the average collective dose for commercial nuclear power plants in the United States over the same time period.