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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.
David A. Mandell
Nuclear Technology | Volume 52 | Number 3 | March 1981 | Pages 383-392
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT81-A32712
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To calculate the radiative heat transfer between fuel bundle surfaces and from the surfaces to the vapor and droplets in a boiling water reactor, it is necessary to calculate the geometrical fuel factors. These view factors, which are the fraction of energy leaving one surface that reaches a second surface when no fluid exists, must be calculated for every pair of fuel rods, from every rod to every channel segment, and from one channel segment to a second channel segment. The crossed-string method was used to obtain algebraic equations for the view factors between rods of the same diameter, from rods-to-channel segments, and from one channel segment to a second channel segment. These equations can be easily incorporated into computer codes. Conservation of energy was used to verify the view factor equations.