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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.
U. Benedict, G. Giacchetti, Hj. Matzke, K. Richter, C. Sari, H. E. Schmidt
Nuclear Technology | Volume 35 | Number 1 | August 1977 | Pages 154-161
Technical Paper | Fuel | doi.org/10.13182/NT77-A31858
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Carbide-based fuels simulating high burnup were prepared by addition of inactive fission product elements. They contained fission product phases of the UMoC2 and U2RUC2 type, and a rare-earth oxide phase. The thermal conductivity of the material is within the range observed for carbide-based fuels free of fission products. The diffusion of plutonium was considerably enhanced by the addition of fission products. The solid fission product swelling rate of a carbide-based fuel was estimated to be 0.5% per at.% burnup.