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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.
H. Disbudak, I. Uslu, A. Y. Bilgesu, G. Gündüz
Nuclear Technology | Volume 135 | Number 3 | September 2001 | Pages 286-294
Technical Paper | Materials for Nuclear Systems | doi.org/10.13182/NT01-A3223
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Pure uranium dioxide and uranium dioxide-gadolinium oxide (5 and 10%) fuels used in this study were prepared by the solution-gelation (sol-gel) technique. The fuels were then coated with boron carbide by chemical vapor deposition. Boron carbide was produced from the reaction of carbon tetrachloride and boron trichloride with excess hydrogen, in a tube furnace at 1000, 1100, and 1175°C. The Fourier transform infrared data of boron carbide deposited on a silica glass were in agreement with the ones in the literature. The experiments showed that the composition of the coating changed with deposition temperature. There was boron-rich coating at low-temperature deposition, and carbon-rich coating at high-temperature deposition. The morphology and the thickness of the coating have been investigated by using scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction spectroscopy.