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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.
Yigal Ronen, Menashe Aboudy, Dror Regev
Nuclear Technology | Volume 129 | Number 3 | March 2000 | Pages 407-417
Technical Note | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT00-A3071
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A novel system for energy production is presented. This system has a modular composition of homogeneous reactors with H2O and 242mAm as a fuel. These reactors are spheres of 0.11-m radius and 1-MW(thermal) power and with a critical mass of 0.0201 kg of 242mAm.The advantages of homogeneous reactors are constant fuel reprocessing and constant refueling. As a result, there is a reduction of fission products, which improves the ratio of natural cooling to heat production with respect to a loss-of-control accident (LOCA) and other safety aspects. Homogeneous reactors also have a large negative temperature coefficient and small inherent excess reactivity during operation.The reactor concept we have presented for a very small, homogeneous reactor, further enhances the safety aspects in the case of a LOCA, because of a large surface-to-volume ratio.The improved safety, the simplicity, and the small volume should compensate for the use of an unconventional nuclear fuel.