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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.
Yasuo Suzuki, Shoji Kimura
Nuclear Technology | Volume 103 | Number 1 | July 1993 | Pages 93-100
Technical Paper | Enrichment and Reprocessing System | doi.org/10.13182/NT93-A34832
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A continuous membrane column process that uses a palladium alloy membrane for the separation of hydrogen isotopes is studied. Hydrogen, deuterium, and tritium permeation rates obtained in previous studies are used in numerical calculations in which the nature of the membrane column is investigated through variations in the operation variables, such as the pressures and their ratio, the reflux ratio, and the stripping column velocity. Finally, a cascade design in which membrane columns are used as unit cells is developed, following a design study of a nuclear fusion reactor fuel cycle system, and the concentrations and flow rates are calculated. The results show that hydrogen, deuterium, and tritium can be separated and concentrated as well by this method as by the liquid hydrogen distillation process. The inventory of the membrane column process is also calculated, and it is ∼2.3 times the fuel processed in a day.