ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 15–18, 2026
Phoenix, AZ|Arizona Grand Resort & Spa
Latest Magazine Issues
Aug 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
October 2026
Nuclear Technology
September 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2026
Latest News
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.
John Sorensen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 83 | Number 3 | December 1988 | Pages 383-395
Technical Paper | Fifth International Retran Meeting / Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT88-A34151
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The possibility of instabilities under certain conditions of operation has been a special concern for boiling water reactors (BWRs). A stability analysis is performed to demonstrate that the total system and its primary components are inherently stable over the allowable operating envelope. The current methodology used by BWR fuel vendors for core reactivity and channel hydrodynamic stability is based on frequency domain analysis. RETRAN is the Electric Power Research Institute time domain system transient analysis code that is widely used by domestic and foreign utilities. RETRAN allows the reactor system to be modeled in a highly accurate manner including all important phenomena (linear and nonlinear) associated with anticipated and unforeseen conditions of operation. RETRAN is demonstrated to be adequate for the analysis of total plant stability, core reactivity stability, and channel hydrodynamic stability. All key phenomena are adequately modeled by RETRAN and core reactivity analyses have been shown to agree well with measured plant data.