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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.
Okan H. Zabunoglu, Bernard I. Spinrad
Nuclear Technology | Volume 93 | Number 3 | March 1991 | Pages 376-381
Technical Paper | Enrichment and Reprocessing System | doi.org/10.13182/NT91-A34531
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A flow sheet for simplified reprocessing of long cooled light water reactor (LWR) fuel is presented. The standard Purex process is modified so that after the first solvent extraction cascade (co-decontamination), plutonium is washed out of the organic phase without reduction. This step also washes out enough uranium that the U-Pu product can be directly used as LWR fuel. A finish partitioning step, with plutonium reduction, decontaminates the remaining uranium product. Neither the U-Pu product nor the uranium product requires further purification, process yields are excellent, and plant equipment can be simplified.