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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.
Ralph G. Bennett
Nuclear Technology | Volume 96 | Number 1 | October 1991 | Pages 117-122
Technical Note | Nuclear Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT91-A35537
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Finite element modeling of the stresses in TRISO-coated fuel particles under normal operating conditions is undertaken with the ABAQUS code. Accurate results for the coating layer stresses are obtained with 30 finite elements in the model and ∼100 time steps through the life of the fuel. When compared to an earlier General Atomics/Forschungszentrum Jülich (GA/KFA) computer model of fuel performance, several discrepancies are uncovered in the earlier model. The GA/KFA model underpredicts the stresses in the silicon carbide layer, and the discrepancy increases with fission gas pressure.