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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.
S. R. Bierman, B. M. Durst, E. D. Clayton, R. I. Scherpelz, Howard T. Kerr
Nuclear Technology | Volume 44 | Number 1 | June 1979 | Pages 141-151
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT79-A32247
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A series of criticality experiments with fast test reactor (FTR) fuel pins in water has been performed in support of the Advanced Fuel Recycle Program (AFRP). The objective of these experiments was to provide clean, easily defined criticality data on AFRP-type fuel pins in water for use in verifying calculational techniques and nuclear data used in calculations. Measurement data were obtained on water-flooded square lattices of FTR fuel pins. The number of fuel pins required for criticality was determined at lattice pitches of 7.7, 9.5, 9.7, 12.6, 15.3, and 19.1 mm to be 1268, 605, 580, 219, 205, and 162, respectively. These center-to-center fuel pin spacings correspond to water-to-fuel volume ratios of 1.61, 3.33, 3.49, 6.81, 10.88, and 17.53, respectively, and cover the neutron moderation range from near optimum to the highly undermoderated. KENO-IV calculations with ENDF data from the AMPX system overestimated the experimental results by 1 to 2% in keff. KENO-IV calculations with FLANGE-ETOG-THERMOS-EGGNIT-processed ENDF data resulted in calculated values 1 to 6% high in keff.