The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and the US Department of Energy’s (DoE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have just entered into a strategic research partnership. The purpose of the partnership is to better understand the performance and behavior of materials required for use in commercial fusion power plants.
     UKAEA said, “One of the major challenges in harnessing fusion energy is developing materials to cope in extreme environments,” UKAEA said. “This is because high energy neutrons and extreme temperatures can weaken or change the desirable mechanical, thermal, optical or electronic properties of materials, which can reduce the lifetime of fusion machines.”
     The five-year partnership has three million six hundred thousand dollars in funding. Materials will be irradiated using neutrons at the ORNL High Flux Isotope Reactor, a DOE Office of Science user facility, located in the U.S. This research will attempt to understand how certain materials  respond to irradiation over long periods. The ultimate purpose of this research is to increase the longevity of the materials tested.
     The material selected for testing under the partnership will primarily focus on the ‘breeder blanket’. This is a component used to provide the tritium fusion fuel to make fusion power plants self-sufficient.
     Post irradiation testing will include tensile and hardness property measurements. This will help illuminate both the effect and the extent of radiation-induced hardening and concurrent loss of ductility in these materials.
      Advanced microstructural analysis will also be carried out to understand the effects of neutron radiation on chemical segregation and precipitate stability. UKAEA said that these assessments are critical to provide assurance that these alloys will be sufficiently durable and reliable to support a fusion power plant throughout the expected lifetimes of each component.
     The partnership will also see staff from the U.S. and the U.K. visits their counterpart facilities to share industry skills. The project is part of the UK Fusion Materials Roadmap, which was launched by UKAEA in 2021. The aim is to deliver new neutron-resilient materials as well as irradiation and post-irradiation testing to provide design engineers with data to build future fusion power plants.
     Amanda Quadling is the UKAEA’s Director of Materials Research. She said, “The partnership will allow UKAEA access to ORNL’s archive of existing irradiated materials, which include binary iron-chromium alloys, advanced steels, silicon carbide composites and copper alloys Alongside this, UKAEA will also be placing entirely new materials into the ORNL High Flux Isotope Reactor, including new high-temperature steels developed by both UKAEA and wider UK industry, permeation barrier coatings and welded materials.”
      Mickey Wade is ORNL’s Fusion Energy Division director. He said, “This research collaboration will be a critical piece of the economics of a fusion device in the future, establishing which materials can last for long periods in the fusion environment. This is a great opportunity for ORNL and UKAEA to partner on a key area for fusion.”
     Last February, UKAEA announced that it had awarded contracts worth a total of three million, eight hundred thousand dollars to eighteen organization. The contracts are to focus on overcoming specific technical and physical challenges to make fusion energy a commercial reality. Feasibility studies will be funded from sixty million dollars to two hundred forty-four million dollars from the UKAEA’s Fusion Industry Program and awarded through the UK government platform Small Business Research Initiative. The selected projects aim to tackle specific challenges linked to the commercialization of fusion energy. These include novel fusion materials and manufacturing techniques as week as innovative heating and cooling systems.