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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.
Jong Ho Lee, Soon Heung Chang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 76 | Number 1 | January 1987 | Pages 27-40
Technical Paper | Nuclear Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT87-A33894
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A small-break loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) caused by a stuck-open power-operated relief valve is one of the important contributors to nuclear power plant risk. A pressurizer surveillance system was designed to use a microcomputer to prevent the malfunction of the system; the effect of this improvement has been assessed through probabilistic risk assessment. The microcomputer diagnoses the malfunction of the system by a process-checking method and automatically performs the backup action related to each malfunction. This improvement means that we can correctly diagnose “spurious opening,” “failure to reclose,” and “small-break LOCA,” which are difficult for operators to diagnose quickly and correctly, and by taking automatic backup action we can reduce the probability of human error.