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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.
Paul McConnell, Richard Salzbrenner, Gerald W. Wellman, Ken B. Sorenson
Nuclear Technology | Volume 104 | Number 2 | November 1993 | Pages 171-181
Technical Paper | Special Issue on Waste Management / Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT93-A34881
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Depleted uranium (DU) alloys are currently used for gamma-ray shielding in casks and as shielding blocks. For the transport cask application, a significant weight and dimensional penalty exists when using the DU solely for shielding. If credit could be taken for the structural use of the DU for containment in a transport cask, greater payloads may be realized. Mechanical property measurements of several uranium alloys and finite element analyses of prototype transport casks assumed to be constructed, in part, from selected uranium materials were performed to evaluate the potential for the use of DU alloys for cask containment. These data and analyses support the concept of the use of DU alloys for the containment function even under hypothetical accident conditions. A conclusion is that the properties of certain DU alloys are therefore sufficient to warrant further consideration of the material for this purpose.