About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
MS&T25: Materials Science & Technology
|
| Symposium
|
Metallic Nuclear Fuel Design, Fabrication and Characterization
|
| Presentation Title |
Nitinol as Surrogate for Laser Additive Manufacturing of Uranium-10 Zirconium Metallic Nuclear Fuel |
| Author(s) |
Abhi Ghosh, Reza Esmaeilizadeh, Anil Prasad, Gregory Hamilton, Ike Dimayuga |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Anil Prasad |
| Abstract Scope |
Fabrication of Uranium-Zirconium (U-Zr) metallic fuels for Generation IV Sodium Fast Reactors via advanced manufacturing processes like laser-based metal additive manufacturing (AM) could allow for performance enhancements concerning swelling control and gas release, higher burn-up capacity, and better heat transfer efficiency during reactor operations. The laser AM fabrication of U-10wt%Zr (U-10Zr) involves complex solidification and phase transformations under rapid cooling conditions, which could result in fabrication-related defects such as cracks, distortions, and print failures. As a non-active precursor to active fabrication studies with U-10wt%Zr (U-10Zr), a near-equiatomic Nitinol is selected as a viable surrogate for U-10Zr to represent key solidification features during the fuel fabrication, including similar phase and crystallographic transformations, as well as the analogous metastable and secondary phases formed during rapid solidification. Ultimately, with comparable melting and thermal properties, Nitinol could potentially serve as a viable proxy to assess the printability of U-10Zr with LP-DED. |