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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.
Juris Tiliks, Gunta Kizane, Aigars Vitins, Elina Kolodinska, Elisa Rabaglino
Nuclear Technology | Volume 159 | Number 3 | September 2007 | Pages 245-249
Technical Paper | Beryllium Technology | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-A3872
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The effects of temperature, magnetic field (MF), and ionizing radiation on the release of tritium from the Be pebbles irradiated in the BERYLLIUM experiment in 1994 in Petten, The Netherlands (irradiation neutron fluence 1.24 × 1025 m-2, irradiation temperature 780 K, and 3H content 7 appm) were investigated in this study. Simultaneous action of these factors corresponds to the real operating conditions of the blanket of a fusion reactor. The total amount of tritium in a separate pebble, the chemical forms of localized tritium (T0, T2, and T+), and the tritium distribution in the pebble volume were determined by a lyomethod (dissolution). Thermoannealing experiments were performed at a constant temperature of 1123 K for 2 h under the following conditions: separately both in MF (1.7 T) and under fast electron radiation (E = 5 MeV; P = 14 MGyh-1) as well as under the action of all three factors. Tritium in the Be pebbles is localized for the most part as T2 (85 to 94%). The abundances of T+ (4 to 5%) and T0 (5 to 10%) are little. The tritium distribution in a pebble is not uniform; most of the tritium is localized in the inner part of a pebble. An MF of 1.7 T decreases slightly the fractional release of tritium under the given conditions of thermoannealing (from 30 to 25%), the fast electron radiation increases it (from 30 to 40%), but the simultaneous action of the MF and radiation increases it (from 30 to 54%). The effects observed are explained that the MF and radiation affect the concentration of main diffusing particles T0 in a beryllium matrix.