Will the era of nuclear reactors be printed on 3D printers?

TCR (Transformational Challenge Reactor) is a research and development project that prints out a 3D printer for a nuclear reactor run by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States.

The Oak Ridge Research Institute uses a research facility built as part of the Manhattan Plan and is pursuing various projects, including nuclear reactor research and development, under the US Department of Energy. The research institute said that in the United States, where 20% of the power supply is provided by nuclear power, light water reactors, which can be built relatively inexpensively with small, high power, are mainly used. However, it is highly likely to be abolished by 2055 due to licensing issues, and development of a nuclear reactor to replace the light water reactor is required. However, active research and development on nuclear reactors was at its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, and in modern times, designing and implementing a new reactor requires enormous costs.

TCR, run by Oak Ridge Research Institute, is a project that reduces costs for complex designs that have been concerned about high production costs. It has reached the stage of conducting a core demo printed by a 3D printer. The reactor developed with TCR uses diseased uranium TRISO type coated fuel particles as fuel and yttrium hydrogen as moderator. This explains that it is possible to maintain the critical state with a smaller amount of fuel than before.

Not only that, TCR also conducts nuclear reactor operation tests and performance analysis using AI, and is conducting extensive tests as far as possible for commercialization soon. The TCR concept has been realized because remarkable progress has been made in additional manufacturing technologies such as 3D printers. It is said that through 3D printers, technologies and materials that were not available for nuclear power in the past decades can be used.

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory said that the nuclear industry is still constrained in how nuclear energy technology is designed, built and deployed, and stressed that TCR will present a new model to accelerate the construction of advanced nuclear energy systems. Related information can be found here .