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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.
Andrew S. Zarchy, Robert C. Axtmann
Nuclear Technology | Volume 39 | Number 3 | August 1978 | Pages 258-265
Technical Paper | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT78-A32055
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Several environmental impact analyses have identified gaseous permeation from blanket regions, through metals and into the steam cycle, as the major pathway for routine tritium emissions from fusion power plants. The propensity of gases and molten salts to impede tritium permeation have been examined, and the results indicate that helium as a coolant or flibe (LiBeF3) as a blanket material would reduce tritium permeation in extant designs to negligible rates. For example, the tritium release rates from the Princeton Reference Design would be two to three orders of magnitude less than that calculated under the assumption (used in the design report) that fluids would not affect the permeation rate. The tritium permeation characteristics of novel reactor designs may be evaluated by a straightforward procedure. First, the tritium mass transport rates in the fluids are computed from the Chilton-Colburn j-factor analogies, the Gilliland correlations, or a simple transformation of heat transfer data. The asymptotic fluid-limited and metal-limited permeation rates are then equated to identify the tritium pressure regime in which a transition occurs in the rate-limiting mechanism.