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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.
Carl A. Beard, John J. Buksa, Michael W. Cappiello, J. Wiley Davidson, Jay S. Elson, John R. Ireland, Robert A. Krakowski, Burt J. Krohn, William C. Sailor, Joseph L. Sapir
Nuclear Technology | Volume 111 | Number 1 | July 1995 | Pages 122-132
Technical Paper | Nuclear Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A35151
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A conceptual target and blanket design for an accelerator transmutation of waste system capable of transmuting the high-level waste stream from 2.5 light water reactors is described. Typically, four such targetblanket designs would be served by a single linear accelerator. The target consists of rows of solid tungsten rod bundles, cooled by heavy water and surrounded by a lead annulus. The annular blanket, which surrounds the target, consists of a set of actinide-oxide-slurrybearing tubes, each 3 m long, surrounded by heavy water moderator. Heat is removed from the slurry tubes by passing the slurry through an external heat exchanger. Long-lived fission products are burned in regions that are separate from the actinides. Using the Monte Carlo codes LAHET and MCNP, a conceptual design for a beam current of 62.5 mA/target of 1.6-GeV protons has been developed. Preliminary engineering analyses on key system components have been performed. A preliminary layout of the concept and the associated primary-heat transport subsystems was developed, demonstrating a multiple-containment-boundary design philosophy.