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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.
Jan-Li Wang, Jay F. Kunze
Nuclear Technology | Volume 85 | Number 3 | June 1989 | Pages 285-293
Technical Paper | Nuclear Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT89-A34250
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The RELAP5 thermal-hydraulic transient code has been applied to a reactor safety analysis of a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) to a reactor with thin fuel plates operating at highly subcooled conditions, ∼75°C below boiling temperatures at operating pressure, 25°C below boiling conditions at atmosphere pressure that occurs immediately following the LOCA. Depressurization is not the critical issue in this case, but plate boiling and reflooding and mixing of vapor and fluid streams are the critical aspects of the calculation. The analysis of the results shows the sensitivity of the calculation to the time periods of the steam “chugging” effects in the water channels between fuel plates. This MOD2 version is the first version with which we found consistency and realism in the results calculated for these very difficult transient conditions.