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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.
Toyoshi Fuketa, Hideo Sasajima, Tomoyuki Sugiyama
Nuclear Technology | Volume 133 | Number 1 | January 2001 | Pages 50-62
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT01-A3158
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Experimental programs on fuel behavior during simulated reactivity-initiated-accident (RIA) conditions at the Nuclear Safety Research Reactor (NSRR) in Japan and the CABRI test reactor in France appear to indicate that cladding failures may occur at enthalpy values lower than would be expected. Results from two experiments designated as HBO-1 in NSRR and REP Na-1 in CABRI indicate that the occurrence of fuel failure is strongly influenced by corrosion of cladding in the tested fuels. However, data had been limited to fuel rods with conventional (1.5% Sn) Zircaloy-4 cladding. Results are described from newly conducted NSRR experiments, TK test series, for 38 to 50 MWd/kg U pressurized water reactor fuels with low-tin (1.3% Sn) Zircaloy-4 cladding, and anticipated processes of fuel behavior during the transient are discussed.