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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.
Veera R. Gutti, Sudarshan K. Loyalka
Nuclear Technology | Volume 166 | Number 2 | May 2009 | Pages 121-133
Technical Papers | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A7399
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Thermophoresis causes particle deposition on nuclear reactor components from gas/vapor streams, both during normal and accident conditions, and it is of interest to develop good computational tools for estimation of such deposition. This paper describes a numerical technique to solve the coupled equations of energy and particle continuity. The numerical technique was verified by comparing the solution of the Graetz energy transport problem obtained by using the present numerical technique with the series solution. Thermophoretic deposition efficiency obtained from the present numerical technique agrees with the analytical solution for short tubes. Deposition efficiencies for the case RePr = 1 and Pr K = 1 are in good agreement with the published theoretical expressions for thermophoretic deposition efficiency. Also, the results from the numerical solution for thermophoretic deposition efficiency compare well with some experimental data published in the literature. Dependence of deposition efficiency on thermophoretic coefficient K was studied, and it was observed that the dependence is more linear for smaller thermal gradients than for the larger gradients. Further, the computational fluid dynamics program FLUENT® 6.3 was also used to explore calculations of the thermophoretic deposition efficiencies for some cases, and it was noted that results are sensitive to mesh size and that very fine mesh near the surface was needed for accurate results. The results computed are in good agreement with our numerical calculations and experimental data.