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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.
L. P. Leach, L. J. Ybarrondo, G. D. McPherson
Nuclear Technology | Volume 33 | Number 2 | April 1977 | Pages 126-149
Technical Paper | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT77-A31772
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The first two loss-of-coolant experiments have been performed in the Loss-of-Fluid Test (LOFT) Facility. The experimental results are compared to analytical model results from the RELAP4 computer code. LOFT is a pressurized water reactor specially designed and instrumented to perform experiments representative of a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) in a power reactor. For these first two experiments, the nuclear core was not installed in LOFT. The first experiment was initiated from a pressure of 9.3 MPa with water at 282°C, and the break represented a half-size double-ended offset shear in the hot leg of a power reactor. The second experiment was initiated from a pressure of 15.3 MPa, a temperature of 282°C, and simulated a complete double-ended offset shear in the cold leg of a power reactor. In the first experiment, emergency core cooling was injected by low-pressure, high-pressure, and accumulator emergency core cooling systems at times representative of what would occur in a LOCA in a power reactor.