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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.
Jorge Arpa, Alan S. Fatemi, S. K. Mathavan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 70 | Number 1 | July 1985 | Pages 17-25
Technical Paper | Third International Retran Meeting / Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT85-A33659
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A methodology to assess the impact of overcooling transients on vessel wall integrity with respect to pressurized thermal shock conditions has been developed at Florida Power & Light Company for the Turkey Point Nuclear Units. Small break loss-of-coolant and small steamline break events have been simulated with the RETRAN code. Highly conservative assumptions, such as engineered safeguards with minimum temperature and maximum flow, have been made to maximize cooldown and thermal stress in the vessel wall. Temperatures, pressures, and flows obtained with RETRAN provide input for stress and fracture mechanics analyses that evaluate reactor vessel integrity. The results of the RETRAN analyses compare well with generic calculations performed by the Westinghouse Owners Group for a similar type of plant.