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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.
Robert P. Schuman
Nuclear Technology | Volume 65 | Number 3 | June 1984 | Pages 422-431
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT84-A33398
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two leach-resistant waste forms, a borosilicate glass developed for the high-level waste calcines from reprocessed uranium fuels and iron-enriched basalt, a fused ceramic developed for americium plus plutonium wastes, have been leach tested. The specimens were leached in distilled deionized water and in a saturated salt brine at ∼30°C for 28, 63, and 126 days; one set was leached in a gamma field of ∼104 Gy/h (∼106 rad/h). The specimens were simulated high-level waste forms prepared from inactive ingredients and spiked with 22Na, 60Co, 95Zr-95Nb, 137Cs, 133Ba, 144Ce, and 241Am. The components were melted and heat treated, and specimens were sawed from the solidified material. The gamma field increased the leach rates in water (pH ∼3 after irradiation) typically by a factor of ∼10 and increased the leach rates in salt brine (pH decreased much less during irradiation) by a factor of ∼2. The leach rate of cobalt from glass was about seven times that from iron-enriched basalt. The leach rates usually decreased with increasing leach time. Both waste forms were still leach resistant in irradiated brine at 30°C, <2 µg/cm2·day, and fairly leach resistant in irradiated water at 30°C, <25 µg/cm2·day.