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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.
Arif Nesimi Kiliç
Nuclear Technology | Volume 108 | Number 3 | December 1994 | Pages 413-420
Technical Paper | Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT94-A35023
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A simple approximation for predicting the concrete erosion rate and depth is derived based on the heat balance integral method for conduction with the time-dependent boundary conditions. The problem is considered a four-region model including separate, moving heat sinks at the boundaries due to endothermic decomposition reactions. Polynomial temperature profiles are assumed, and the results are compared with previous experimental data and other analytical solutions. Since the technique provides an approximate temperature distribution on the average, it does not give the real temperature evaluation but provides a simple prediction of the erosion rates and the depth of defaulted concrete in terms of the parameters that are important during the physical phenomena. Because of its simplicity and reliability, the model might be useful for the larger molten core/concrete interaction codes and aerosol generation models.