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.
Tanju Sofu, John M. Kramer, James E. Cahalan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 113 | Number 3 | March 1996 | Pages 268-279
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT96-A35207
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The metalfuel version of the FPIN2 fuel element mechanics model has been incorporated into the SASSYS/SAS4A code system. In this implementation, SASSYS/SAS4A provides the fuel and cladding temperatures, and FPIN2 performs the analysis of fuel and cladding deformation. The FPIN2 results aid in the understanding of accident progression by providing the estimates of the axial expansion of fuel, time and location of cladding failure, and the condition of the fuel at the time of failure. The validation of the integrated SASSYS/SAS4A-FPIN2 model has been performed using the data from in-reactor TREAT tests for the prototypic binary and ternary fuels of the Integral Fast Reactor concept. The integrated model calculations are compared with available experimental data for the six fuel elements in these tests, and good agreement is obtained for the key parameters related to transient behavior of the metallic fast reactor fuel elements.