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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.
Richard Simms, Gerald E. Marsh, Alan B. Rothman, George S. Stanford
Nuclear Technology | Volume 52 | Number 3 | March 1981 | Pages 331-341
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT81-A32707
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In Transient Reactor Test Facility tests L6 and L7, a loss-of-flow accident sequence was simulated using three fuel elements containing (Pu, U)O2. The test fuel had been previously irradiated at 36 kW/m in a thermal-neutron spectrum in the General Electric Test Reactor to 3 at.% burnup. Fuel dispersal rates at 10 and 20 times nominal power were measured using the 1.2-m fast neutron hodoscope. The measured axial fuel density variations were weighted with typical liquid-metal fast breeder reactor fuel-worth distributions so that the significance of the fuel motion could be assessed. Fuel dispersal rates equivalent to 60¢/s per dollar were observed in test L7. The dispersal rate for test L6 was ∼20¢/s per dollar. The dispersive fuel motion in test L7 could have been augmented by fuel vapor pressures. The experimental fuel-worth changes were also compared with the fuel-worth changes computed by fuel motion models SLUMPY and LEVITATE. Of the two models, LEVITATE provided better agreement with the equivalent fuel-worth changes in test L7.