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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.
O. K. Tallent, R. P. Wichner, Roy L. Towns
Nuclear Technology | Volume 68 | Number 3 | March 1985 | Pages 336-343
Technical Paper | Nuclear Fuel | doi.org/10.13182/NT85-A33579
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The transport or diffusion of uranium (as a stand-in for plutonium) was investigated under conditions approximating those of the primary coolant loop in a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor. Profiles were obtained for uranium penetration in H-451 graphite at temperatures ranging from 900 to 1400°C. Profile data for given temperatures were considered in terms of the following expression: where C is the concentration of uranium at time t, for distance x, into the pellet; C0 is a constant representing the uranium concentration at x = 0 for all t, and D is the diffusion coefficient. Diffusion coefficients for uranium initially present as dicarbide at 1000 and 1400°C were found to be defined byFor uranium initially present as dioxide at 900, 1000, and 1400°C, diffusion coefficients are defined bywhere R is the gas constant and T is the temperature in degrees Kelvin.