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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.
Krishna Vinjamuri, Richard R. Hobbins
Nuclear Technology | Volume 62 | Number 2 | August 1983 | Pages 145-150
Technical Paper | Nuclear Fuel | doi.org/10.13182/NT83-A33213
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A postirradiation examination of two uranium aluminide (UAlx) fuel plates from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) was conducted. The two fuel plates failed due to pinhole corrosion during irradiation to ∼76% of the maximum burnup limit of 2.3 X 1021 fission/cm3. It is believed that the aluminum cladding failed due to pit corrosion initiated at an existing pit ∼0.0076 to 0.0102 cm (3 to 4 mil) deep at a hot spot. About 0.2 and 0.8 g of UAlx fuel was washed out of these plates through the pinholes due to aqueous corrosion and erosion of the UAlx under ATR primary coolant conditions. Aluminum cladding pit corrosion depth and UAlx fuel corrosion-erosion mass rates under the ATR primary coolant conditions were calculated to be 0.23 cm/yr and 14 g/yr, respectively.