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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.
M. Broc, J. Sannier, G. Santarini
Nuclear Technology | Volume 63 | Number 2 | November 1983 | Pages 197-208
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT83-A33280
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A set of experimental studies is presented as a first approach to the problems that liquid-lead circuits might pose in the molten salt reactor design with cooling by direct contact between the salt and this liquid metal. Technologically it appears that the components of circuits developed for the use of liquid sodium in fast neutron breeder reactors (valves, electromagnetic pumps and flowmeters, pressure transducers, and cold traps) can be used in the presence of liquid lead, though with certain restrictions. Where corrosion is concerned, ferritic steels, although subject to mass transfer phenomena, are much more resistant than austenitic steels at the temperatures currently adopted in the molten salt reactor design. Finally, liquid lead could have a slight embrittling effect on ferritic steels, but this phenomenon needs to be checked more thoroughly.