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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.
Yun Long, Yi Yuan, Mujid S. Kazimi, Ronald G. Ballinger, Edward E. Pilat
Nuclear Technology | Volume 138 | Number 3 | June 2002 | Pages 260-272
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT02-A3293
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fission gas release in thoria-urania fuel has been investigated by creating a specially modified FRAPCON-3 code. Because of the reduced buildup of 239Pu and a flatter distribution of 233U, the new model THUPS (Thoria-Urania Power Shape) was developed to calculate the radial power distribution, including the effects of both plutonium and 233U. Additionally, a new porosity model for the rim region was introduced at high burnup. The mechanisms of fission gas release in ThO2-UO2 fuel are expected to be essentially similar to those of UO2 fuel; therefore, the general formulations of the existing fission gas release models in FRAPCON-3 were retained. However, the gas diffusion coefficient was adjusted to a lower level to account for the smaller observed release fraction in the thoria-based fuel. To model the accelerated fission gas release at high burnup properly, a new athermal fission gas release model was introduced. The modified version of FRAPCON-3 was calibrated using the measured fission gas release data from the light water breeder reactor. Using the new model to calculate the gas release in typical pressurized water reactor hot pins gives data that indicate that the ThO2-UO2 fuel will have considerably lower fission gas release above a burnup of 50 MWd/kg HM.