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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.
Takaaki Sakai, Yasuhiro Enuma, Takashi Iwasaki
Nuclear Technology | Volume 145 | Number 3 | March 2004 | Pages 287-297
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT04-A3478
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Decay heat removal analyses for lead-bismuth-cooled natural-circulation reactors are described in this paper. A combined multidimensional plant dynamics code (MSG-COPD) has been developed to conduct the system analysis for the natural-circulation reactors. For the preliminary study, transient analysis has been performed for a 300-MW(thermal) lead-bismuth-cooled reactor designed by Argonne National Laboratory. In addition, decay heat removal characteristics of a 400-MW(electric) lead-bismuth-cooled natural-circulation reactor designed by the Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute (JNC) has been evaluated by using MSG-COPD. The primary reactor auxiliary cooling system (PRACS) is prepared for the JNC concept to get sufficient heat removal capacity. During 2000 s after the transient, the outlet temperature shows increasing tendency up to the maximum temperature of 430°C because the buoyancy force in a primary circulation path is temporarily reduced. However, the natural circulation is recovered by the PRACS system, and the outlet temperature decreases successfully.