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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.
Kevin Hesketh, Marc Delpech, Enrico Sartori
Nuclear Technology | Volume 131 | Number 3 | September 2000 | Pages 385-394
Technical Note | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT00-A3124
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In 1993, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development/Nuclear Energy Agency first convened the Working Group on the Physics of Plutonium Recycle (WPPR) (now renamed the Working Party on the Physics of Plutonium Fuels and Innovative Fuel Cycles). Since its inception, the WPPR (whose task has now been expanded to include innovative fuel cycles) has published six volumes of detailed results from analyses of plutonium fuel in pressurized water reactors and fast reactors. A seventh volume on the physics of plutonium fuel in boiling water reactors is in preparation. The analyses have been mostly in the form of theoretical benchmark exercises for situations beyond current experience, for which multinational contributions provide a basis for comparison of diverse calculational methods and nuclear data libraries. The overall activities of the WPPR are reviewed and summarized.