ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 15–18, 2026
Phoenix, AZ|Arizona Grand Resort & Spa
Latest Magazine Issues
Aug 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
October 2026
Nuclear Technology
September 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2026
Latest News
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.
Mitchel E. Cunningham, Courtney R. Hann, Anthony R. Olsen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 47 | Number 3 | March 1980 | Pages 457-467
Technical Paper | Fuel | doi.org/10.13182/NT80-A32400
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
With the increasing sophistication and use of computer codes in the nuclear industry, there is a growing awareness of the need to identify and quantify the uncertainties of these codes. Work is now being performed at Battelle-Pacific Northwest Laboratories to study the uncertainties in steady-state stored energy calculations by using linear propagation of uncertainties. This method predicts the uncertainty of variables by propagating input variances through models. Comparison of Monte Carlo analysis to linear propagation shows good agreement and verifies the adequacy of linear propagation. Linear power, radial gap width, fuel thermal conductivity, flux depression, and fuel heat capacity are all shown to be parameters of major importance when calculating both stored energy and its uncertainty. The uncertainty for stored energy at beginning-of-life is ∼17% (99% confidence level) and rises to a maximum of 37% during a simulated two-cycle power history.