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 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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.
Michel Amblard, Jean-Marc Delhaye, Karine Froment, Jean-Marie Seiler, Bruno Tourniaire
Nuclear Technology | Volume 153 | Number 3 | March 2006 | Pages 315-325
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT06-A3710
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the ANAIS experiments, water was injected as a jet or a spray at a given temperature and a given flow rate onto a superheated (~1600°C) molten steel layer for an imposed value of the heat rate delivered to the steel layer by induction heating. At the beginning of a test, water was injected during a few seconds with a high flow rate. Thereafter, the flow rate was decreased to evacuate the thermal power under steady-state conditions. The heat generation rate in the metal was maintained during the water injection at ~1 MW/m2, which represents a typical reactor situation. The test results showed that the steel-water heat transfer led to different final situations depending on the injection mode and water velocity. In addition, the water-cooling power was rather high at the very beginning of the transient and comparable to the heat rate delivered to the metal layer in steady-state conditions. Also, it was observed that no steam explosion occurred in any case, and that a solid layer always formed at the steel free-surface.