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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.
Yue Guan, Fei Li, Mohammad Modarres, David Bessette, Marino Dimarzo
Nuclear Technology | Volume 133 | Number 3 | March 2001 | Pages 269-289
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT01-A3174
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents an application of a thermal-hydraulic and probabilistic assessment (TH-PA) method to the Westinghouse Advanced Passive 600-MW(electric) (AP600) design. The Westinghouse probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) was used for screening probabilistically important scenarios only. Corresponding integrated-behavior-logic diagrams (IBLDs) were constructed, and accident trajectories were developed. Small cold-leg break accidents and direct vessel injection line break accidents were analyzed. Scenarios in which TH phenomena may play a major role, and which have the highest frequency of core uncovery and heatup were identified. Important insights were obtained. Application of this method to the AP600 has shown its value in prioritizing safety issues. Its application to the AP600 has been further ensured by (a) relying on the Westinghouse PRA to model functional/logical relationships of the components/systems, (b) using a peer review approach to validate the most important IBLDs, and (c) comparing accident trajectories with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission-sponsored AP600 experimental results. While this application has demonstrated effectiveness of the method in accident scenario screening for the AP600, the TH-PA method has broader potential.