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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.
Norihiro Doda, Yasushi Okano, Hisashi Ninokata
Nuclear Technology | Volume 144 | Number 2 | November 2003 | Pages 175-185
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT03-A3438
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A numerical simulation thermal-hydraulics code called SPOOL based on computational fluid dynamics considering sodium reaction and aerosol transport is developed. Sodium pool fires are simulated using the SPOOL code, and periodic oscillation of the flame is observed with frequency similar to that observed for small-scale pool fire experiments with industrial fuels. The calculated mass-burning rate differs slightly from experimental results, yet it increases with pool temperature in agreement with experimental trends. The mass flux of aerosol driven by thermophoresis is calculated to be about 100 times larger than that by gravity, and the aerosols become concentrated at the edge of the pool. The release fraction, obtained by dividing the total mass of aerosol released into the atmosphere by that produced, increases with pool temperature in qualitative agreement with experiments.