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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.
Jie Liu, Seiichi Koshizuka, Yoshiaki Oka
Nuclear Technology | Volume 144 | Number 3 | December 2003 | Pages 324-336
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT03-A3448
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A computer code PROVER-II is developed for the propagation phase of a sodium vapor explosion. A new thermal fragmentation model is proposed that includes three kinds of timescales for modeling the instant fragmentation, spontaneous nucleation fragmentation, and normal boiling fragmentation. The pressure wave propagation in a sodium vapor explosion is analyzed and compared with that in a steam explosion. The energy conversion ratio of an in-vessel sodium vapor explosion is calculated by using hydrodynamic and thermal fragmentation mechanisms, and sensitivity analyses are carried out for some parameters. The initial thermal conditions for energetic fuel-coolant interactions in a sodium system are examined. Results show that the high saturation temperature of sodium results in a much lower pressure peak in a sodium vapor explosion compared to a steam explosion, and the mechanical energy release is limited by the mass of melt participating in the explosion during the core disruptive accident in liquid-metal-cooled fast breeder reactors.