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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.
R. L. Nelson, N. Parkinson, W. C. L. Kent
Nuclear Technology | Volume 53 | Number 2 | May 1981 | Pages 196-203
Technical Paper | Realistic Estimates of the Consequences of Nuclear Accident / Nuclear Fuel | doi.org/10.13182/NT81-A32624
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Future fabrication plants for breeder reactor fuel will have to be designed to more stringent personnel radiation exposure standards. Thus, it is desirable to move away from glove box operations toward fully remote operating and maintenance concepts. Experience with the manufacture of fuel for the prototype fast reactor demonstrated that processes requiring frequent and skilled adjustment are to be avoided and that the essential requirement for a remote fabrication route is that it be stable, tolerant, and readily meet product specifications. The equipment selected must be reliable and have low maintenance requirements. Maintenance is perceived as a crucial area, and concepts under consideration for future plants involve the remote removal, decontamination,and replacement of equipment modules or assemblies. A vibro-compaction technique for filling fuel pins, which consists of a single infiltration of a coarse bed of spheres with fine spheres, is considered to have high potential for upscale in a remote operation. The gel precipitation route to 800- and 80-nm spheres of (U,Pu)O2 has been shown to yield acceptable products for vibro-compaction of fuel elements to ∼80% smear density. This wet chemical route meets many of the criteria for future remote fabrication plants and a sequential development program toward a full-scale production plant is in hand.