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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.
R. B. Walton, T. D. Reilly, J. L. Parker, J. H. Menzel, E. D. Marshall, L. W. Fields
Nuclear Technology | Volume 21 | Number 2 | February 1974 | Pages 133-148
Technical Paper | Instrument | doi.org/10.13182/NT74-A31369
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The applicability of portable instruments for rapid nondestructive verification of the enrichment of UF6 in cylinders has been tested on a large number of Types-30 and -5A cylinders. Three basic techniques were used: (a) gamma-ray counting with Nal, combined with ultrasonic measurement of cylinder wall thickness, (b) passive-neutron counting, and (c) active-neutron interrogation with thermal neutrons from a radioactive neutron source. The accuracy of the gamma-ray method was ∼5% (1σ) for Type-30 cylinders of UF6 and 2% for highly enriched UF6 in Type-5A cylinders; however, the method occasionally failed for Type-30 cylinders because of background from nonvolatile daughters of 238U plated on the cylinder walls. The standard deviation of enrichments of 110 Type-30 cylinders, derived from passive-neutron counting data by assuming a constant 235U/234U ratio, is The response of the active system increases almost linearly with enrichment up to ∼2.5% 235U and then saturates at ∼4%.