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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.
E. K. Opperman, J. L. Straalsund, G. L. Wire, R. H. Howell
Nuclear Technology | Volume 42 | Number 1 | January 1979 | Pages 71-81
Technical Paper | Material | doi.org/10.13182/NT79-A32163
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An apparatus was developed that utilizes light ions to simulate the effect of a fusion reactor first wall environment on the creep properties of metals and alloys. The creep apparatus includes a wire specimen stressed in the torsional mode. Rotation or strain is measured by an optically coupled photocell tracking system. Temperature control of the specimen is obtained by varying the temperature of flowing helium passing perpendicularly across the specimen. The initial study involved bombarding a 20% cold-worked AISI Type 316 stainless-steel specimen at 400°C with 14.8-MeV protons at a beam intensity of ∼10 µA/cm2 or a displacement rate of ∼3.4 × 10−7 dpa/s. The accelerator was operated intermittently to accumulate 130 h of beam time and a total dose of ∼0.2 dpa. Strain rates on the order of 5 × 10−4% shear strain per hour were observed during irradiation, whereas negligible strain rates were observed when the accelerator was turned off. On a dpa basis, proton-induced irradiation creep rates were approximately one order of magnitude higher than those observed in fast reactor neutron irradiations of the same materials under similar conditions.