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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.
M. L. Williams, R. T. Santoro, T. A. Gabriel
Nuclear Technology | Volume 29 | Number 3 | June 1976 | Pages 384-391
Technical Paper | Fusion Reactor Material / Material | doi.org/10.13182/NT76-A31603
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The calculated nuclear performances of niobium, Type 304 stainless steel, and nimonic-105 as structural materials in a conceptual D-T fusion-reactor blanket model are compared. For each structural material, the tritium breeding ratio, the energy-deposition rate, the operating dose, the time dependence of the neutron-induced activity, the time dependence of the dose from the activation products, the time dependence of the nuclear afterheat, and the atomic displacement rate are calculated. Emphasis is placed on the nuclear response in the first structural wall to the selected structural material for an assumed neutron wall loading of 1 MW/m2. Taking into account all the nuclear responses, Type 304 stainless steel appears to be a reasonable choice as the structural material for fusion-reactor application.