“As we demonstrate the reliability of these printed components, we’re looking at a future where additive manufacturing might become standard practice in producing other critical reactor parts,”
Richard Howard, of ORNL´s Nuclear Energy and Fuel Cycle Division, stated:
“The nuclear materials and fuels research communities are being asked to qualify advanced reactor technologies to survive very harsh conditions. Additive manufacturing will expand my group’s toolset to develop innovative experiments to support this critical need,”
For a long time, we knew that a lot was happening in the nuclear industry, but little news was coming out. Newfangled technology used extensively in your nuclear power plant is not a headline that many would find an attractive one. As we learned from Adam Travis, specific geometries, novel materials, lower costs, and faster turnaround times are some of the drivers for the adoption of additive in the nuclear industry.
Qualification is, thankfully, rigorous and difficult, and the room for error is very limited. Many parts of nuclear power facilities are custom, and many more are low-volume. Power plants also have very lengthy life spans of 50 years or more, making the continued availability of parts an issue. A lot of vendors may be bankrupt, and traditional processes may take many months to replace a part. That time to market advantage also plays a part in power plant construction. Nuclear plants are often decades and billions of dollars late, complicating their financing. Any improvement in this area would therefore have a lot of impact. Many new nuclear power plant designs are being developed now, and there are innovative startups trying to improve reactors. Work in tokamaks also advances apace, and there is broader plasma and energy research that would benefit from better creep, heat, and strength-resistant parts. This is therefore broader than steel test tubes. Additive could be used extensively in the nuclear industry, and this could be a very profitable engagement for us, while creating a lot of value for the world through more efficient, safer energy.
