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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.
Wei-Wu Chao, Jay F. Kunze, Weimin Dai, Sudarshan K. Loyalka
Nuclear Technology | Volume 105 | Number 2 | February 1994 | Pages 261-270
Technical Paper | Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT94-A34927
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Research reactors present a different set of operating conditions than do light water (power) reactors (LWRs). Thermal-hydraulic transient/safety codes, such as the Reactor Loss of Coolant Analysis Program (RELAP), have been verified against experimental data from several test facilities designed for the operating conditions of LWRs. However, the operating pressures, temperatures, fuel type, and flow direction are quite different in most high-power research reactors. Furthermore, the coolant (water) in these reactors generally is not degasified and hence contains dissolved air. Results are given of benchmark experiments compared with RELAP predictions for the conditions encountered during a loss-of-coolant accident for a typical research reactor.