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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.
Hugo Van Dam, J. Eduard Hoogenboom
Nuclear Technology | Volume 63 | Number 3 | December 1983 | Pages 359-368
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT83-A33265
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A specific type of gaseous core reactor consists of a UF4/CF4 fuel mixture in chemical equilibrium with a graphite reflector wall. Criticality calculations show that such a system requires a relatively small fuel investment. Temperature-dependent fuel redistribution at power is shown to give a minor positive reactivity effect, which does not jeopardize safe reactor operation. Analysis of heat transport demonstrates that very high temperatures in the core center can be realized at moderate gas pressures, which opens a way to improve the efficiency of fission energy conversion processes.