Wednesday, February 12, 2025

ORNL Produces First 3D Printed Specimen Capsule for Nuclear Power – 3DPrint.com


Oak Ridge Nationwide Laboratory (ORNL), the biggest R&D middle sponsored by the US Division of Power (DOE), has efficiently examined a 3D printed specimen capsule to be used within the lab’s Excessive Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR). Also called “rabbit capsules”, the steel parts are used to gauge the efficiency and security of take a look at reactors within the nuclear power area.

ORNL, a longtime innovator in additive manufacturing (AM) analysis, produced the chrome steel rabbit capsule utilizing a powder mattress fusion (PBF) printer. An ORNL staff additionally designed the half, which endured the circumstances throughout the HFIR for nearly a month.

ORNL’s analysis into the 3D printed rabbit capsule will proceed with post-irradiation checks this winter, with the staff that labored on the venture planning to make use of the outcomes of the general venture to do broaden R&D into 3D printing components for nuclear power, in addition to different industries topic to equally stringent regulatory necessities. The venture is supported by funding from the DOE’s Superior Supplies and Manufacturing Applied sciences Workplace.

In a press launch, Richard Howard, ORNL’s group lead for irradiation engineering, stated, “This can be a vital step towards demonstrating that [AM] can be utilized to develop and qualify specialised parts that can not be conventionally machined.”

The Manufacturing Demonstration Facility Director at ORNL, Ryan Denhoff, stated, “As we show the reliability of those printed parts, we’re taking a look at a future the place [AM] may grow to be customary apply in producing different important reactor components.”

I feel that nuclear power has emerged as some of the promising alternatives for development within the AM business, in no small half due to the efforts of the DOE to speed up R&D into utilizing AM to develop supplies that may face up to the punishing environments of nuclear reactors. On this context, ORNL has a uniquely vital function to play in facilitating that development, given its twin standing as a world chief in nuclear power analysis, and an early AM adopter.

Furthermore, since ORNL is in a uncommon place as a DOE-sponsored facility that works ceaselessly and carefully with the Division of Protection (DoD), the establishment may present comparatively straightforward entree into the power sector for the various AM OEMs which can be already working carefully with the US army. As an example, at the least one of many ARCEMY machines that Australian OEM AML3D has offered to DoD is put in at ORNL. The power sector is AML3D’s largest strong-suit exterior of protection, with the corporate having not too long ago expanded into the US utilities business by way of a cope with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

For my part, the best-case situation for the US AM business over the subsequent 5 years would largely entail the expertise switch of AM know-how from the public-private nexus dominating protection exercise to the a lot smaller — however no much less important — public-private sphere concerned in US power infrastructure. The truth that, traditionally, nuclear energy is the realm throughout the US power sector the place authorities and personal business have labored collectively most carefully is but another reason to have excessive hopes for AM’s future in nuclear power purposes.

Photographs courtesy of ORNL

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