ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 15–18, 2026
Phoenix, AZ|Arizona Grand Resort & Spa
Latest Magazine Issues
Aug 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
October 2026
Nuclear Technology
September 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2026
Latest News
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.
Judith K. Hohorst, Chris M. Allison
Nuclear Technology | Volume 98 | Number 2 | May 1992 | Pages 149-159
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT92-A34670
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The SCDAP/RELAP5 severe accident analysis computer code, developed at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, is used to analyze the fourth in a series of debris formation experiments. The debris formation-four (DF-4) experiment deals with heatup and meltdown of a boiling water reactor (BWR)-representative fuel and control blade assembly segment, performed in the Annular Core Research Reactor at Sandia National Laboratories. The DF-4 experiment provides data that are used to validate core damage progression and BWR-specific models to gain an understanding of the phenomena occurring in the bundle during a severe BWR accident and to identify additional modeling needed in severe accident codes. The SCDAP/RELAP5 model used for this analysis accurately predicts the key damage events, which include control blade melting, channel box relocation and runaway oxidation, the order and timing of these events, and the maximum bundle temperature. From these analytical calculations, an accident scenario and insights into phenomena occurring during a severe BWR accident are developed.