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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.
Tatsuhiko Uda, Hajime Iba, Kiyoshi Hanawa
Nuclear Technology | Volume 72 | Number 2 | February 1986 | Pages 178-183
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT86-A33739
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Melt refining of uranium-contaminated aluminum, which has been difficult to decontaminate because of the high reactivity of aluminum, was experimentally studied. Samples of contaminated aluminum and its alloys were melted after adding various halide fluxes at various melting temperatures and various melting times. Uranium concentration in the resulting ingots was determined. Effective flux compositions were mixtures of chlorides and fluorides, such as LiF, KCl, and BaCl2, at a fluoride/chloride mole ratio of 1 to 1.5. The removal of uranium from aluminum (the “decontamination effect”) increased with decreasing melting temperature, but the time allowed for reaction had little influence. Pure aluminum was difficult to decontaminate from uranium; however, uranium could be removed from alloys containing magnesium. This was because the activity of the aluminum was decreased by formation of the intermetallic compound Al-Mg. With a flux of LiF-KCl-BaCl2 and a temperature of 800°C, uranium added to give an initial concentration of 500 ppm was removed from a commercial alloy of aluminum, A5056, which contains 5% magnesium, to a final concentration of 0.6 ppm, which is near that in the initial aluminum alloy.