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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. Kwast
Nuclear Technology | Volume 46 | Number 2 | December 1979 | Pages 234-240
Technical Paper | Nuclear Power Reactor Safety (Presented at the ENS/ANS International Meeting, Brussels, Belgium, October 16–19, 1978) / Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT79-A32322
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Capsule irradiations have been performed on single fast reactor fuel pins in a sodium environment under simulated loss-of-coolant-flow conditions. The main objectives were to determine the thresholds, modes, and mechanisms of fuel pin failures. The parameters were canning temperature and internal pin pressure. The loss-of-coolant-flow condition was simulated by adjusting midwall canning temperatures of ∼850 and ∼1000°C. The results indicated that creep rupture is the predominant failure mechanism at canning temperatures of 1000°C and gas pressures of above 40 bars. The failure mechanism of fuel pins tested at ∼850°C and gas pressures lower than 60 bars is probably cladding strain due to differential expansion of fuel and canning.