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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.
C. V. Chester, R. O. Chester
Nuclear Technology | Volume 21 | Number 3 | March 1974 | Pages 190-200
Technical Paper | Reactor Siting | doi.org/10.13182/NT74-A31389
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A pot-type Liquid-Metal-Cooled Fast Breeder Reactor was analyzed as a civil defense problem in a nuclear attack. In order for the core inventory of fission products to add significantly to casualties, they must be promptly released from the reactor structure due to blast from the weapon, and added to the fallout. The analysis of the interaction of weapon effects with the significant elements of the structure surrounding the reactors was checked by high explosive tests on scale models. It is concluded that for prompt ejection of the core, a megaton-range weapon must be detonated close enough so that the reactor is in the crater, or that an air shock greater than 170 atm impacts at near normal incidence the fueling cell wall crossing the sodium tank. For megaton weapons, delivery accuracy substantially exceeding that ascribed to deployed strategic delivery systems would be required.