Basic Research Needs for Future Nuclear Energy: Report of the Basic Energy Sciences Workshop for Future Nuclear Energy, August 9-11, 2017

Technical Report · Wed Aug 09 00:00:00 EDT 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1616270· OSTI ID:1616270

Beierschmitt, Kelly ^[1]; Buchanan, Michelle ^[2]; Clark, Aurora ^[3]; Robertson, Ian ^[4]; Britt, Phillip ^[2]; Navrotsky, Alexandra ^[5]; Burns, Peter ^[6]; Tortorelli, Pete ^[2]; Misra, Amit ^[7]; Wishart, Jim ^[8]; Fenter, Paul ^[9]; Gewirth, Andy ^[10]; Wirth, Brian ^[11]; Mincher, Bruce ^[1]; Szlufarska, Izabela ^[4]; Busby, Jeremy ^[2]; Horton, Linda ^[12]; Garrett, Bruce ^[12]; Vetrano, John ^[12]; Wilk, Philip ^[12] ; Runkles, Katie ^[12]; Kung, Stephen ^[13]; Lesica, Sue ^[13]; Wyatt, Brenda ^[2]; Counce, Deborah ^[2]; Jones, Kathy ^[2]

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1. Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
2. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
3. Washington State Univ., Pullman, WA (United States)
4. Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)
5. Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States)
6. Univ. of Notre Dame, IN (United States)
7. Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)
8. Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
9. Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
10. Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States)
11. Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States)
12. Dept. of Energy (DOE), Washington DC (United States). Office of Science. Basic Energy Sciences
13. Dept. of Energy (DOE), Washington DC (United States). Office of Nuclear Energy

Nuclear power today accounts for approximately 20% of the electrical supply for the US. It provides reliable energy that helps to stabilize the national grid. In contrast to current nuclear power facilities, future concepts operate at higher temperatures, are operationally more efficient, more fully utilize the energy stored within the fuel, and reduce the amount of waste produced. Recent advances in chemistry and materials sciences provide an unprecedented opportunity to develop the critical systems—the fuel, coolant, and structural materials—needed for deployment of advanced nuclear reactor designs. To address the challenge of stringent demands on material systems as their properties and performance continuously evolve over the operational lifetime, the frameworks to uncover the underlying processes that cause reduced performance have been developed over the last decade. There is now the prospect of designing materials that report upon their own damage, are self-healing, and leverage what would be considered deleterious chemical processes to increase their performance within advanced reactor designs. Success will provide an energy source needed to secure a stable and safe energy supply for the nation. To identify the key research directions required to discover the chemical processes and material degradation mechanisms that result in loss of performance of the fuel, coolant, and structural materials, nearly 150 theoreticians, computational experts, and experimentalists from industry, national laboratories, academia, and federal agencies participated in a workshop held in August 2017. Based on the discussions held at the workshop, five Priority Research Directions (PRDs) were identified. These PRDs defined the key scientific challenges that must be met as well as the opportunities that can be exploited to achieve a multi-scale spatial and temporal understanding of fundamental processes that govern the properties and performance of the different material systems required for advanced reactors.

• Research Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC) (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
• OSTI ID: 1616270
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE