Part 3 of 3 Parts (Please read Parts 1 and 2 first)
Nicholas Brow is a nuclear engineer at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He says with respect to the construction of a nuclear power reactor, “Typically, this process can take decades and millions or billions of dollars.” He goes on to say that the cost of new parts is so high because certifying them usually involves a “cook and look” process. A new part is put into a test reactor to see if it performs correctly. Engineer often makes changes to the part based on the data they collect. This is an iterative process that continues until the performance of the part meets expectations. In the same way that nuclear reactor technologies are stuck in 1970, so are the processes for certifying them.
Terrani expressed the hope that the large amount of data generated during the 3D printing process can help to speed up the certification process. This would lower the cost and the time required to construct a nuclear fission reactor. He said that printing a component the size of a human hand might generate as much as hundreds of gigabytes of information about the quality of the part being printed. If there is a defect, it will show up in the data. There will be no need of ultrasound scans or other expensive tests to find it.
Instead of requiring a human being to sift through the huge amount of data generated by the 3D printer, researchers at ORNL are working on training a machine learning algorithm to use the data generated by the printer to verify the integrity of parts. Terrani says, “Once we make the stuff, we don’t have to come back and spend multiple months certifying things. Imagine the moment that you’re done making a part and the AI can tell you if it’s good or bad. That’s the dream.”
The TCR’s gas-cooled system is basically a modified and enhanced version of the X-10 which was the first reactor ever constructed for continuous operation. The X-10 was built at the ORNL in the early 1940s. It went operational only nine months after construction began. That is extremely rapid when compared to the only reactor currently being constructed in the U.S. which is expected to have taken at least twelve years to complete from the start of construction. Terrani hopes that the new 3D printing technology, the new artificial intelligence algorithms and other new technologies will be able to bring this rapid pace of development back to the nuclear industry. Terrani says, “Nuclear power can’t be the only industry that doesn’t adopt any new technologies. We want to open the floodgates and see advanced nuclear power in this country.”
The global nuclear industry is already moving to adopt new technologies and designs in the construction of what are called small modular reactors (SMRs). These reactors would produce three hundred megawatts or less of electricity. They would be constructed in factories in modules that could be transported to the site where they will be used. Some of the designs could even be portable in the sense that complete reactors could be built inside a freight container that could then be moved around to operate at different locations as needed. The combination of 3D printing with SMRs might be able to revitalize the nuclear industry and lead to cheaper and safer power reactors that could be constructed and certified rapidly.