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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.
H. P. Nawada, N. P. Bhat, G. R. Balasubramanian
Nuclear Technology | Volume 114 | Number 1 | April 1996 | Pages 97-110
Technical Paper | Nuclear Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT96-A35226
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To compare and evaluate various fuel cycle options for a 500-MW(electric) fast breeder reactor, the electrorefining process has been examined for reprocessing spent fuel. Making use of an improved thermochemical model, optimum process conditions for electrorefining have been worked out. These conditions are the following: capacity of the electrorefining cell, number of cells, batch size, feed adjustments, sequential operations for recovery of uranium and co-recovery of uranium and plutonium, number of cycles, and timeframe to meet the refueling schedule. The spent fuel is envisaged to undergo reprocessing in three campaigns: (a) the inner core campaign, (b) the outer core campaign, and (c) the blanket and the leftover campaign. Feed adjustments are done by mixing either the spent inner core or the outer core fuels with the blankets. Three product streams with required fuel composition for direct refabrication of the inner core, the outer core, and the blanket fuel subassemblies, respectively, are obtained by certain sequential electrorefining operations. These calculations made for a mixed-oxide fuel core can be easily extended to the metallic core.