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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.
Robert E. Rothe, Louis W. Doher, A. L. Johnston
Nuclear Technology | Volume 28 | Number 1 | January 1976 | Pages 165-171
Technical Note | Fuels for Pulsed Reactor / Chemical Processing | doi.org/10.13182/NT76-A31550
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A station has been installed at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Safety Laboratory to volume-calibrate their storage tank farm housing 560 kg of enriched (93.2% 235U) uranium solution. The calibration (relating contained solution volume to height) of tanks used to store or process fissile materials is often complicated by the large surface area presented by thousands of borosilicate glass rings used for criticality prevention. Yet, an accurate and reliable measurement of this relation is important to good material accountability and possibly to nuclear safety. The latter purpose can be served by detecting accumulations of insoluable precipitates or the formation of critically unsafe voids in the bed of rings. With this station, calibrations are easily accomplished with an accuracy better than 1 liter at any point within a 500-liter tank. Additional benefits include increased safety through reduced potential for contamination release, improved efficiency since one operator replaces the previously required two, and the complete elimination of both solid and liquid contaminated waste generation.