The United States and United Kingdom successfully fabricated test capsules made up of advanced metal alloys and graphite for use in future advanced nuclear reactors.
October 7, 2024
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The United States and United Kingdom successfully fabricated test capsules made up of advanced metal alloys and graphite for use in future advanced reactors.
The project supports a larger effort between the two countries to share nuclear energy user facility resources to advance civilian nuclear energy technologies.
The capsules will undergo irradiation testing later this year at Idaho National Laboratory (INL).
What’s in the Capsules?
The UK research team assembled eight capsules at the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) Culham Campus in Abingdon after the experimental design was finalized at INL.
The capsules are comprised of 578 samples of structural materials including advanced steel and various forms of graphite.
Researchers hope to understand how each sample responds to neutron irradiation and high temperatures to evaluate their potential use in advanced reactors, including high-temperature gas cooled reactors which are being developed and deployed by both countries.
The project is a joint effort between the U.S. Department of Energy’s Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) and its counterpart in the UK, the National Nuclear User Facility (NNUF), as part of a bilateral cooperative action plan to foster nuclear energy research and resource sharing between the two countries.
"NSUF facilitated U.S. and UK working groups to select materials important for nuclear energy in both countries," said NSUF Director Brenden Heidrich. "The project is an important example of how we can effectively work with and share resources with an international partner to more efficiently answer questions about advanced materials."
“The U.S. and UK teams have established a genuine, warm working friendship, and to have completed this first part of the joint irradiation campaign so efficiently is a real achievement for all involved,” added the NNUF Management Group’s Chair Chris Grovenor.
In addition to NSUF and NNUF, the project also included contributions from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Purdue University, Westinghouse, the National Nuclear Laboratory, University of Manchester, University of Oxford, and University of Sheffield.
What’s Next?
The capsules were shipped to the States and will be loaded into INL’s Advanced Test Reactor, which is the world’s highest power test reactor, and will be exposed to temperatures up to 750 degrees Celsius to mimic the conditions in an advanced reactor.
The capsules will then be disassembled at the lab’s Hot Fuel Examination Facility so that the research teams can analyze how the materials performed.
The materials will later be available to the public for further examination through the NSUF’s Material Library – an open archive of over 9,000 irradiated nuclear fuel and materials samples.
NSUF is the only designated nuclear energy user facility in the United States. It offers a consortium of state-of-the-art irradiation, post-irradiation testing facilities, and high-performance computing that can be utilized to support nuclear energy research and development.