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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.
Charles R. Marotta
Nuclear Technology | Volume 42 | Number 3 | March 1979 | Pages 350-352
Technical Note | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT79-A32192
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A simple and accurate calculation method is presented for the variation of bubble worth in a molten core. The method depends on previous analysis of the author on reactivity increase due to compaction of unmoderated fissile systems. The average density of the fuel material after it has expanded into the bubble region is the controlling parameter of the proposed method. Comparison with detailed bubble worth calculations due to Nicholson and Goldsmith shows excellent agreement. Given a “quality” base worth case, the bubble worth variation for the perturbed system (of fuel, either moving into or out of the bubble volume) can be accurately calculated in terms of the base worth value. The proposed method can be used to evaluate the physical reasonableness of complex calculations using transport theory or Monte Carlo for estimates of bubble worth.