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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.
Lainsu Kao, Mujid S. Kazimi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 78 | Number 2 | August 1987 | Pages 170-184
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT87-A33995
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Analyses of the concrete attack and ex-vessel aerosol release using various assumptions for the molten corium/concrete interaction have been performed. The study involved variations in several parameters, such as initial debris temperature, amount of unoxidized zirconium, amount of melt, concrete ablation temperature, and concrete type. At high initial corium temperatures the periodic contact (nucleate-boiling-like) model leads to more rapid concrete attack, higher decomposition gas release, and higher fission product release than the gas film model. At low initial corium temperatures, when a corium crust is initially formed, the various heat transfer models do not lead to significant differences in the fission product releases. Besides the initial debris temperature, the most significant parameter in prediction of the fission product release is the amount of unoxidized zirconium. Among the various fission products, the nonvolatiles, such as lanthanum, are more sensitive to changes in the parameters.