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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.
Dragan Mirkovic, David J. Diamond
Nuclear Technology | Volume 95 | Number 2 | August 1991 | Pages 162-174
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT91-A34554
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An accident sequence in a boiling water reactor is studied in which there is a large reactivity insertion caused by the flushing of borated water from the core. This sequence can occur during an anticipated transient without scram after the injection of borated water from the standby liquid control system. The boron shuts down the power, but if there is a rapid depressurization of the vessel (e.g., because of the inadvertent actuation of the automatic depressurization system), large amounts of low-pressure, relatively cold, unborated water enters the vessel causing a rapid dilution and cooling. This study determines whether the reactivity addition caused by this flushing could lead to a power excursion that is sufficient to cause catastrophic fuel damage. Calculations are carried out using the RELAP5/MOD2 computer code under different assumptions regarding timing and availability of lowpressure pumps and with different reactivity coefficients. The results show that the fuel enthalpy rise is insufficient to cause catastrophic fuel damage, although less severe fuel damage might still be possible from overheating of the fuel cladding.