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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.
K. Nagarajan, T. Subramanian, B. Prabhakara Reddy, P. R. Vasudeva Rao, Baldev Raj
Nuclear Technology | Volume 162 | Number 2 | May 2008 | Pages 259-263
Technical Note | First International Pyroprocessing Research Conference | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A3954
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Reducing the cooling time of spent fast breeder reactor (FBR) fuel, thus reducing the doubling time and introducing metallic fuels into FBRs, is essential for meeting the increasing energy demand of India. Development of pyrochemical reprocessing technology for processing the spent FBR fuels is another prerequisite. Accordingly, studies on the molten salt electrorefining process for metallic fuels and the oxide electrowinning process for oxide fuels have been carried out at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam. A laboratory-scale argon atmosphere facility for molten salt electrorefining process studies is operational. Using this facility, studies on all the unit operations of the process have been carried out on uranium alloys. A code, PRAGAMAN, based on thermochemical modeling has been developed to simulate the electrotransport behavior of elements during the electrorefining process. Based on our studies, the eutectic MgCl2-NaCl-KCl ternary salt has been proposed as the alternate electrolyte for the conventional 2CsCl-NaCl electrolyte for oxide processing. A facility to demonstrate the remotization of all the process steps of the molten salt electrorefining process flow sheet for metallic fuels at 1- to 3-kg scale is being set up. Basic electrochemical studies on the reduction behavior of the chlorides and oxychlorides of uranium and the lanthanides in molten salts have also been carried out. This paper describes the studies carried out so far and the plans for the near future.