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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.
R. C. Sanders, G. E. Mueller
Nuclear Technology | Volume 42 | Number 3 | March 1979 | Pages 289-296
Technical Paper | Reactor Siting | doi.org/10.13182/NT79-A32182
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The maximum credible accident for which a nuclear reactor must be analyzed is a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) due to a major rupture in the primary system. Such an accident has been analyzed for a conceptual design of a consolidated nuclear steam system (CNSS) using the thermal-hydraulic computer code RELAP4/MOD5. The results of the analysis show that the maximum fuel cladding temperature during the accident is ∼344°C (652°F), which is sufficiently low to preclude any damage to the reactor core. Based on the results of this analysis, it appears that a LOCA in a CNSS may be less severe than in typical loop-type pressurized water and boiling water reactors. This result is expected because of the smaller piping connected to the CNSS reactor vessel