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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.
Shinichi Kitawaki, Tadahiro Shinozaki, Mineo Fukushima, Tsuyoshi Usami, Noboru Yahagi, Masaki Kurata
Nuclear Technology | Volume 162 | Number 2 | May 2008 | Pages 118-123
Technical Paper | First International Pyroprocessing Research Conference | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A3937
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A series test of the pyroprocess was carried out to recover U-Pu alloy from mixed oxide (MOX) pellets. In the Li-reduction step, the reduction behavior of MOX was similar to that of UO2. In the electrorefining step, the separation factor between U and Pu was 1.9 for the combination of the reduced MOX anode and the liquid cadmium cathode, which agrees well with the value obtained in previous studies. Approximately 99% of the HM (U and Pu) initially present in the anode or molten salt was detected in the electrodes or molten salt after the electrolysis. Considering the analytical error of inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy, this mass balance is reasonable. The amount of U remaining in the anode was slightly larger than that of Pu, due to the reoxidation. The U-Pu alloy ingot was successfully formed by distillation of Cd.