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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.
Farhang Sefidvash
Nuclear Technology | Volume 71 | Number 3 | December 1985 | Pages 527-534
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT85-A33675
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new nuclear reactor design based on the fluidized bed concept is proposed. A current design utilizes spherical fuel of slightly enriched Zircaloy-clad uranium dioxide fluidized by light water under pressure. The reactor is modular in system; therefore, any size reactor can be constructed from the basic standard module. The reactor physics calculations show that reactivity increases with porosity to a maximum value and thereafter decreases. This produces inherent safety and eliminates the need for control rods and burnable poisons. The heat transfer calculations show that the maximum power extracted from the reactor core is not limited to the material temperature limits but to the maximum mass flow of coolant, which corresponds to the desired operating porosity. Design simplicity and inherent safety make it an attractive small reactor design.