Facility part of larger project to optimise advanced manufacturing technologies
BWX Technologies (BWXT) has installed and tested a specialised furnace for the manufacturing of advanced forms of Triso fuel for Generation IV nuclear power reactors.
The newly commissioned chemical vapour infiltration furnace completes a new production line at BWXT’s advanced technologies facility in Lynchburg, Virginia.
The furnace solidifies additively manufactured fuel forms that house Triso particle fuel – allowing for more Triso particles per pellet.
BWXT said the new facility means it can now load uranium nitride Triso into additively manufactured fuel forms. The result is a nuclear fuel product comprising a higher mass of uranium per unit volume than traditional Triso compacts. The new fuel is designed to be more cost-effective with a longer reactor lifespan, potentially reducing overall reactor system costs.
Triso fuels contain layers of silicon and carbon that allow the fuel to withstand extremely high temperatures that are above the threshold of current fuels.
Each Triso particle is about the size of a poppy seed and can be packaged into cylindrical fuel pellets or pebbles for use in high temperature gas- or molten salt-cooled reactors.
BWXT is working with Idaho National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory to test and qualify a different form of Triso fuel that contains a uranium nitride fuel kernel for higher performance.
The new furnace expands BWXT’s Triso fuel manufacturing capabilities at the facility and is part of a larger project supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE) to optimise advanced manufacturing technologies that could cut the cost of microreactors to benefit future reactor designs in the process.
The DOE said BWXT is expected to ramp up the commercial production of Triso fuel in support of its commercial BANR high-temperature gas microreactor design and to meet market demand from other Triso fuel users.
The DOE describes Triso fuel as “the most robust nuclear fuel on Earth” given its ability to withstand high temperatures, resist corrosion and act as its own containment system.
