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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.
Hsiang-Shou Cheng, Ming-Shih Lu, David J. Diamond
Nuclear Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | December 1978 | Pages 283-298
Technical Paper | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT78-A32114
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The space-time effects associated with the void reactivity feedback in a commercial boiling water reactor were studied with the aid of the two-dimensional (R,Z) time-dependent coupled neutronics thermal-hydraulics computer code BNL-TWIGL. The statistical weight factor (SWF), which equates a point-reactor model to an appropriate space-dependent model, was used to quantify these effects. The SWF varied for the different reference reactor conditions and types of void perturbations considered. Its significant magnitude demonstrated that unless proper account is taken of multidimensional effects in plant transient calculations, the void feedback will be incorrect, and this will lead to errors in power and temperature. The presence of bypass void was found to increase the void reactivity feedback. The influence of other feedback mechanisms was studied, and a suggestion was offered for obtaining a measurement of the void reactivity coefficient.