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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.
V. C. Badham, W. E. Kastenberg, G. C. Pomraning, D. Okrent
Nuclear Technology | Volume 47 | Number 2 | February 1980 | Pages 221-233
Technical Paper | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT80-A32428
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Whenever a fissionable blanket is added to a controlled thermonuclear reactor, an investigation of the potential for accidental criticality is necessary to ensure the safety of this hybrid device. The neutronic effects of blanket meltdown and the ingress of steam into the blanket, studied for one such fusion-fission hybrid reactor, indicate that accidental criticality will be achieved only for very long blanket residence times or highly improbable accident sequences. Even though only one hybrid device was investigated, the results indicate that it is possible to design a reactor that will remain subcritical even under certain incredible circumstances.