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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.
Chan Bock Lee, Yong Sik Yang, Young Min Kim, Dae Ho Kim, Youn Ho Jung
Nuclear Technology | Volume 147 | Number 1 | July 2004 | Pages 140-148
Technical Paper | Thoria-Urania NERI | doi.org/10.13182/NT04-A3520
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A thoria-urania (ThO2-UO2) fuel performance analysis code was developed by adding performance models and material properties correlations for thoria-urania fuel to a UO2 fuel performance analysis code, and its prediction capability was validated by comparison with thoria-urania fuel irradiation test data. Analysis of the ThO2-UO2 fuel performance in a typical pressurized water reactor showed that it could be irradiated up to a burnup of 70 to 100 MWd/kg heavy metal by optimizing the fuel rod design, and the overall irradiation performance of the ThO2-UO2 fuel would be somewhat better than for UO2 fuel.
