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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.
Daniel Magallon, Hermann Hohmann, Hubert Schins
Nuclear Technology | Volume 98 | Number 1 | April 1992 | Pages 79-90
Technical Paper | Fast Reactor Safety / Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT92-A34652
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two experiments known as Tl and T2 are performed in the test section TERMOS of the FARO facility. Quantities of the order of 100 kg of molten pure UO2 ∼3000°C are poured into 130 kg of sodium at 400°C and 0.1 MPa contained in a 0.28-m-diam test tube over a height of 2.5 m. The tests show a melt delivery rate twice as high in T2 as in Tl. Because of the large scale of the experiment, the tests reveal new features concerning this type of interaction. Particularly, fuel/coolant interaction (FCI) occurs that induces stepwise penetration and dispersion of the melt, and a limitation of the melt quantity that could penetrate into the sodium. Sodium pressure peaks up to 6.0 MPa and pressurizations of the 0.150-m3 gas phase blanket up to 0.8 MPa are recorded. These FCIs are interpreted as vapor explosions in nearly saturated sodium. Quantities of 60 kg for Tl and 45 kg for T2 of UO2 fragments are collected in the debris catcher located at the bottom of the test tube. A debris bed structure resulting from this type of interaction is identified and characterized. Porosity is almost constant all over the bed height while permeability increases by a factor of 30 when going from the top to the bottom of the bed.