Features that Further Performance Limits of Nuclear Fuel Fabrication: Opportunities for Additive Manufacturing of Nuclear Fuels

Technical Report · Wed May 01 04:00:00 EDT 2019

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1669784· OSTI ID:1669784

Nelson, Andrew T. ^[1]

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1. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

One goal of the Transformational Challenge Reactor (TCR) program is to fully assess the opportunity space for additive manufacturing (AM) to overcome the material limitations restricting development and deployment of nuclear power. This report presents an initial analysis of the opportunities for using AM to significantly impact the nuclear fuel fabrication paradigm. The conventional limitations of the three basic solid fuel types are examined herein, and. possibilities for fabrication technologies to overcome these limitations are outlined. Areas that can be most significantly improved by AM are those in which conventional nuclear fuel fabrication routes are known to limit performance. For monolithic systems, one high priority area is fabrication of heterogeneous duplex and compositionally graded structures— fuel designs that bring significant benefits to fuel utilization. A critical first step in meeting this challenge is to successfully demonstrate AM’s ability to achieve representative density and microstructures for fuel materials such as UO₂. The area with the highest potential for pairing AM methodology with the challenges of nuclear fuel deployment is advanced matrices for particle and dispersion fuels that are free from conventional processing constraints. AM has the potential to achieve packing fractions and matrix quality that are superior to those available through conventional methods. Finally, the use of digital twin data collection, which is possible through in situ build diagnostics, may greatly reduce uncertainty regarding distribution of uranium in these systems. A subsequent FY19 TCR milestone will examine the suitability of existing commercial systems to address these challenges.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1669784
• Report Number(s): ORNL/SPR--2019/1183
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE