ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Aug 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
October 2026
Nuclear Technology
September 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2026
Latest News
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.
Hidemasa Yamano, Shigenobu Kubo, Ken-Ichi Kurisaka, Yoshio Shimakawa, Hiromi Sago
Nuclear Technology | Volume 170 | Number 1 | April 2010 | Pages 159-169
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the 2008 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants / Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-6
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An advanced large-scale sodium-cooled fast reactor named JSFR adopts an innovative two-loop cooling system. This cooling system design raises major technological issues: hydraulic and structural integrity due to the increase in one-loop coolant flow rate, safety design against the break or failure in one-loop piping, and ensuring the reliability of the decay heat removal system (DHRS). The present paper describes the investigation of the piping structural integrity due to flow-induced vibration using a 1/3-scale hot-leg piping test. The structural integrity of the hot-leg piping in the JSFR design has been confirmed by a flow-induced vibration analytical methodology, verified with the experimental data. Additional experimental results have revealed that hydraulic issues including gas entrainment and vortex cavitation could be prevented by some design measures. By applying appropriate safety design, the two-loop system has been confirmed to be valid against the break or failure in one-loop piping by a safety evaluation in this study. The DHRS with natural circulation is designed in conformity with the two-loop system by introducing adequate safety designs. In this paper, the validity of this DHRS is given by a probabilistic safety assessment and safety evaluation.