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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.
Karl Britsch, Mark Anderson
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 11 | November 2020 | Pages 1625-1641
Critical Review | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1682418
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Interest in molten salts for next-generation nuclear reactors has led to increasing design work over the last several years. Much of this builds off historic heat transfer experiments like those of the Molten Salt Reactor Program; however, there is no comprehensive report covering experimental heat transfer in these fluids. This paper attempts to pull together all available reports on fluoride salt heat transfer to aid further research in this area. The data largely support the hypothesis that molten salt heat transfer will be easy to predict so long as salt properties are well known. This paper does not show any consistent indications of resistive films, entrained gases, or radiation heat transfer, but other unknowns are present. In addition to salt properties, these include unusual mass transfer and transition flow conditions.