ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 15–18, 2026
Phoenix, AZ|Arizona Grand Resort & Spa
Latest Magazine Issues
Aug 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
October 2026
Nuclear Technology
September 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2026
Latest News
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.
G. Gündüz, İ. Uslu, I. Önal, H. H. Durmazuçar, T. Öztürk, A. A. Akşit, B. Kopuz, F. Can, Ş. Can, R. Uzmen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 111 | Number 1 | July 1995 | Pages 63-69
Technical Paper | Nuclear Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A35144
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Uranium dioxide-gadolinium oxide fuel was produced by the sol-gel technique. The effects of different parameters such as calcination and reduction temperature, compaction pressure, particle size of powder, type of binder, sintering temperature, sintering atmosphere, and duration of sintering on pore size distribution were investigated. The experiments were carried out on three different fuels, (a) pure urania, (b) uraniagadolinia (10%), and (c) urania-gadolinia (10%)-titania (0.1%) doped fuel. It was observed that compaction pressure as low as 200 MPa is sufficient to obtain highdensity pellets, while the use of binder or grinding the powder below 400 mesh does not affect densities. Reduction of powder at 1000 K always gives lower density fuels than the powder reduced at 873 K. Sintering at high temperature and the use of a wet atmosphere each independently increases the fuel density.