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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.
Daniel Westlén, Janne Wallenius
Nuclear Technology | Volume 154 | Number 1 | April 2006 | Pages 41-51
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT06-A3716
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We have designed a gas-cooled accelerator-driven system dedicated to transmutation of minor actinides. Thanks to the excellent neutron economy of the uranium-free fuel employed, the pin pitch to diameter ratio (P/D) could be increased to 1.8. The increased coolant fraction allows for decay heat removal at ambient pressure. The large coolant fraction further results in a low pressure loss - 26 kPa over the core, 35 kPa in total. Thanks to the large P/D, the elevation of the heat exchanger necessary to remove decay heat by natural circulation is just more than 1 m. The absence of uranium in conjunction with the presence of 35% (heavy atom) americium in the fuel results in a low effective delayed neutron fraction and a vanishing Doppler feedback, making subcritical operation mandatory.