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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.
Te-Chuan Wang, Shih-Jen Wang, Chun-Sheng Chien
Nuclear Technology | Volume 131 | Number 3 | September 2000 | Pages 319-331
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT00-A3119
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The MELCOR code, developed by Sandia National Laboratories, is capable of simulating the severe accident phenomena of light water reactor nuclear power plants (NPPs). A specific large-break loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) for Kuosheng NPP is simulated with the use of the MELCOR 1.8.4 code. This accident is induced by a double-ended guillotine break of one of the recirculation pipes concurrent with complete failure of the emergency core cooling system. The MELCOR input deck for the Kuosheng NPP is established based on the design data of the Kuosheng NPP and the MELCOR users' guides. The initial steady-state conditions are generated with a developed self-initialization algorithm. The effect of the MELCOR 1.8.4-provided initialization process is demonstrated. The main severe accident phenomena and the corresponding fission product released fractions associated with the large-break LOCA sequences are simulated. The MELCOR 1.8.4 predicts a longer time interval between the core collapse and vessel failure and a higher source term. This MELCOR 1.8.4 input deck will be applied to the probabilistic risk assessment, the severe accident analysis, and the severe accident management study of the Kuosheng NPP in the near future.