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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.
W. J. MILLS
Nuclear Technology | Volume 64 | Number 2 | February 1984 | Pages 175-185
Technical Paper | Material | doi.org/10.13182/NT84-A33340
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Jlc fracture toughness behavior of unirradiated and irradiated Mo steel plate and weldment was characterized by the multiple-specimen R curve technique using 0.577 in.-thick (T), 1-T, and 2-T compact specimens. At room temperature, the unirradiated plate exhibited limited plastic deformation and then failed catastrophically due to unstable crack growth in the transition temperature regime. At 427°C, the Mo base metal failed in a stable crack growth mode, and the Jlc value was twice that obtained at room temperature (145 versus 70 to 90 kJ/m2). The weldment was found to be very resistant to unstable tearing at both 24 and 427°C. Its Jlc response, 175 kJ/m2 at 24°C and 116 kJ/m2 at 427°C, was superior to that of the plate at room temperature, but slightly lower than the base metal toughness at 427°C. The effect of specimen size on the elastic-plastic fracture toughness response of the plate and weldment was characterized at 427°C. The 0.577-T and 2-T plate specimens were found to yield comparable Jlc values; however, the smaller specimen exhibited a steeper R curve and higher tearing modulus. The 0.577-T and 1-T weld specimens yielded comparable fracture toughness properties. The JIc fracture toughness for both the plate and weldment was reduced by ∼20% as a result of irradiation to total fluences of 3.2 × 1021 to 5.0 × 1021 n/cm2. The tearing resistance of the plate was found to be insensitive to irradiation, but a fourfold degradation in the tearing modulus was observed in the irradiated weldment.