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The technique, which was developed by the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been licensed by Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC).
The technology uses a sophisticated additive manufacturing technique to print refractory materials, which are highly resistant to extreme heat and degradation, into components with complex shapes needed for advanced nuclear reactor designs.
“This technology is ideal for manufacturing structure and core components for USNC’s advanced reactor designs,” said Kurt Terrani, USNC executive vice-president.
USNC’s refractory material of choice for nuclear reactor core components is silicon carbide, a high-temperature-resistant ceramic that has been tested and proven to be radiation tolerant.
“Traditional machining of silicon carbide into parts for a reactor are so time intensive and expensive that it’s nearly impossible,” an announcement by the Department of Energy said.
The new alternative method combines binder jet printing as the additive manufacturing technique and a ceramic production process called chemical vapour infiltration. The combination could allow USNC to make components with complex shapes more efficiently, such as fluid channels in a heat exchanger.
“This is the holy grail of additive, that you can do things faster, that are in geometries that were previously very difficult or impossible with conventional manufacturing methods,” Terrani said.
Seattle-based USNC plans to open a new pilot fuel manufacturing plant in Tennessee to continue its collaboration with the Oak Ridge laboratory.
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