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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.
A. De Volpi, R. R. Stewart, J. P. Regis, G. S. Stanford, E. A. Rhodes
Nuclear Technology | Volume 30 | Number 3 | September 1976 | Pages 398-421
Technical Paper | Uranium Resource / Instrument | doi.org/10.13182/NT76-A31654
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The fast-neutron hodoscope at the Transient Reactor Test Facility is designed for the determination of fuel motion during the course of brief (0.1- to 30-sec) power transients. During the course of a transient test, data must be recorded from each of 334 hodoscope channels at count rates up to 2 million/sec each, down to millisecond time intervals. This is accomplished in a relatively reliable and inexpensive manner by displaying counts from each detector sequentially in binary code on a lamp panel, which is photographed by a high-speed framing camera, producing a film record of the transient test. After chemical development, the film is examined by a computer-controlled flying-spot scanner, and the position and density of candidate lamp images are recorded on magnetic tape. Through further computer processing, these images are sorted and decoded, and the count rate is recovered for each detector at each instant of collection time. A cathode-ray tube and a plotter, both computer controlled, are used to recreate and analyze the fuel motion history of the experiment. Analysis is directed toward fuel distortion or expansion prior to clad failure, slumping, dispersion, amount and rates of movement, post-scram relocation, and ultimate disposition of fuel.