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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.
S. F. Su, Y. Orechwa, H. Henryson II
Nuclear Technology | Volume 52 | Number 3 | March 1981 | Pages 370-382
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT81-A32711
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two-dimensional multigroup space-time kinetics calculations with thermal-hydraulic feedback were performed for 1000- and 1800-MW(electric) homogeneous and heterogeneous liquid-metal fast breeder reactors. The initiating transient was due to the asymmetric withdrawal of a single control rod. It was found that the point kinetics model can, in many cases, be used for predicting integral reactor characteristics. For accurate predictions of local reactor conditions, space-time kinetics calculations are needed. In the case of both homogeneous and heterogeneous cores, for design basis reactivity insertions with scram, smaller reactivity insertion rates will lead to a greater fuel and cladding temperature rise than large reactivity insertion rates. Heterogeneous cores, because of their inherently greater power shape sensitivity, show a larger temperature rise than the homogeneous cores despite the fact that the transient is of much shorter duration because of an earlier reactor trip due to a lower negative Doppler feedback.