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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.
John L. Glazik, Jr., Henry J. Petroski
Nuclear Technology | Volume 51 | Number 3 | December 1980 | Pages 317-331
Technical Paper | Mechanics Applications to Fast Breeder Reactor Safety / Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT80-A32570
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The dynamic elastic response of flawed and unflawed fast reactor subassembly ducts has been studied. Finite elements were used for a plane-strain analysis of hexagonal ducts containing either internal corner cracks or external midflat cracks. Two geometric loading conditions were considered: uniform internal pressurization and point loads applied at opposite midflats. The time dependence of these loads was chosen as a Heaviside step function for the worst case situation and as a triangular pulse to simulate the more likely condition. The presence of cracks in the duct walls alters the dynamic response of the duct. Although the vibrational mode associated with the response of an uncracked duct is always present, the appearance of different flexural modes and their frequencies depend on the number, depth, and location of cracks. The influence of the modal participation on the crack-tip stress-intensity factor is complex, but upper bounds are estimated for the dynamic effects.