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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.
Hangbok Choi, Chang Joon Jeong, Gyu Hong Roh, Bo Wook Rhee, Myung Seung Yang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 153 | Number 1 | January 2006 | Pages 25-40
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT06-A3687
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Since 1992, the direct use of spent pressurized water reactor fuel in Canada deuterium uranium (CANDU) reactors (DUPIC) has been studied as an alternative to the once-through fuel cycle. The DUPIC fuel cycle study is focused on the analysis of technical feasibility, the fabrication of DUPIC fuels for irradiation tests, and the demonstration of the DUPIC fuel performance. The feasibility analysis was conducted for the compatibility of the DUPIC fuel with existing CANDU-6 reactors from the viewpoints of reactor physics, reactor safety, fuel cycle economics, etc. This study has summarized the intermediate results of the DUPIC fuel compatibility analysis, which includes the CANDU reactor physics design requirements, DUPIC fuel core physics design method, performance of the DUPIC fuel core, and the regional overpower trip setpoint. The physics analysis showed the CANDU-6 reactor can accommodate the DUPIC fuel without deteriorating the physics design requirements by adjusting the fuel management scheme if the fissile content of the DUPIC fuel is tightly controlled.