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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.
Il S. Lee, Kune Y. Suh
Nuclear Technology | Volume 155 | Number 3 | September 2006 | Pages 265-281
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT06-A3761
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A liquid-metal-cooled fast reactor Proliferation-resistant Environment-friendly Accident-tolerant Continuable-energy Economical Reactor (PEACER) is being developed at Seoul National University with metallic-type U-Pu-Th fuel and lead-bismuth (Pb-Bi) coolant, employing the steam-generating Rankine cycle without an intermediate loop. The natural circulation potential is a key ingredient of the liquid-metal reactor design. PEACER is designed as a loop system, which increases the natural circulation capacity and reduces the maintenance cost. This work is concerned with design of a large-scale test loop Heavy Eutectic Loop Integrated Operation System (HELIOS) to simulate thermal-hydraulic behavior of Pb-Bi in the PEACER system following a single-phase one-dimensional flow loop model. The full-height loop is being constructed for Pb-Bi natural-circulation testing and operating procedure development. Electrically heated rods are used in the heating section, and a water-cooling method is adopted in the cooling section. HELIOS has the same elevation difference between thermal centers of the heat source and heat sink but reduced piping diameters.