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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.
Gary S. Stewart, George T. Story
Nuclear Technology | Volume 38 | Number 2 | April 1978 | Pages 264-270
Technical Paper | Low-Temperature Nuclear Heat / Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT78-A32023
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Preliminary studies conducted by the Facilities Engineering Support Agency indicate that the electrical power and recoverable waste heat from a 50-to 100-MW nuclear energy center could supply the future power and space conditioning requirements of a large military installation. The plant design under study is powered by a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) providing electrical energy and precooler effluent of sufficiently high temperature (200°C) for use in a pressurized water district heating network. The military installation was found to be an attractive candidate for utilization of waste heat and electrical power from a central plant because of its size, diversity of energy demand, and operational character. The HTGR system was shown to have an economic advantage over a comparable system using a pressurized water reactor. It is concluded that the nuclear total energy system is technically feasible and capable of serving the utility needs of military installations in the late 1980’s.