The University of Tennessee’s Tickle College of Engineering will be playing a big role in the evolution of making fusion power a potential long-term energy source. Faculty members and graduate students from the Department of Nuclear Engineering are involved in four of the first six Fusion Innovation Research Engine (FIRE) Collaboratives announced for funding by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Along with the $20 million proposal led by Governor’s Chair for Nuclear Materials Professor Steve Zinkle, UT is part of three other FIRE projects that aim to develop an operational fuel cycle within a decade, and innovate solutions for commercial fusion plants to secure a resilient and reliable source of energy. UT faculty will be working on projects led by the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
“It’s consistent with the stature and the respect that our department has in the country,” NE Department Head Brian Wirth said. “We are seeing a significant expansion of investment by the Department of Energy and private companies into fusion materials and fusion technology to try and make fusion a reality as a reliable energy source and they’re coming to the University of Tennessee to help solve their problems.”
The DOE launched the FIRE Collaboratives initiative last year to establish collaborative networks that bridge the gap between fusion research and industry. FIRE Collaboratives consist of teams from government facilities, academia, and industry to address technical challenges on the road to commercial fusion development. Through the FIRE Collaboratives, the DOE hopes to accelerate the transition of scientific discoveries into commercial fusion applications.
UT’s Irons in the FIRE
Wirth and NE Research Assistant Professor Sophie Blondel are principal investigators of the UT teams involved in three of the FIRE projects, which include:
INL is leading a cutting-edge project to test “fusion blanket” technologies and create a critical component of a fusion reactor. The fusion blankets play three important roles: creating new fuel, converting fusion power into heat for generating electricity, and protecting the reactor’s powerful magnets.
Fusion combines two of the smallest atoms. It requires special hydrogen atoms called deuterium, which has one neutron, and tritium, which has two neutrons. Fusing them together generates a tremendous amount of energy—the same reaction that occurs inside the sun. A fusion blanket is the nuclear part of a fusion reactor. Its job is to capture the energy and particles produced during a fusion reaction. Tritium breeding blankets are fundamental for the success of fusion as a reliable energy source. The team will test portions of a blanket system in fission reactors to see how they perform in a nuclear environment.
UT is receiving $900,000 over four years to help understand how tiny flaws in materials change over time and how tritium moves through these materials. They will also work on figuring out how these tiny flaws impact the thermophysical properties
properties and lifetime performance at very high temperatures.
SRNL is leading a collaborative team to develop the fuel cycle essential for fusion energy. The fusion fuel cycle is a critical element of the development and commercialization of fusion energy systems. The team will be designing, fabricating, and operating a continuous, fully integrated system that can recycle, replace, purify, confine, and account for the tritium within a fusion machine.
UT is receiving $600,000 over four years to help study how tritium is trapped and retained in different materials that will make up the blanket systems and PFC armor materials. This will help understand how much tritium is in the system and where it goes.
The fuel cycle and blanket development proposals are associated with understanding how to produce tritium, how to account for the tritium produced and understanding where the tritium is diffusing to be able to pump the tritium back into the fusion reactor.
“There’s excitement that fusion energy is the sustainable long-term nuclear energy source that will generate less radioactive waste. And there are so many private companies working on concepts for what I like to call the fusion engine, or how they’re going to generate the fusion power,” Wirth said. “But none of those concepts is really doing a lot of work on understanding all of the technology that it takes to extract the power, the heat, and turn it into electricity to generate tritium, because tritium has approximately a 12-and-a-half-year half-life, so we’ve got a limited supply of that.”
Blondel is the principal investigator for the UT team working with a FIRE project led by MIT that involves materials testing and advanced simulation capabilities. The near-term goal is to minimize the uncertainty in material property evolution under fusion-relevant irradiation conditions for existing materials, with the long-term goal to develop new materials.
UT is receiving $750,000 over four years to emulate neutron-induced microstructure evolution leading to void swelling in steel by modeling defect microstructure evolution and bridging the microstructure to bulk properties. In the second phase of the collaborative, the team will focus on extending the modeling predictive capabilities to tungsten alloy candidates for plasma facing components.
“What’s really exciting is that we’re going to be the only one doing the modeling,” Blondel said. “Everyone else involved is going to do the experiments, and they’re going to rely on us to explain what’s happening. To be given that opportunity is fantastic.”
Future Impacts
Wirth notes how important the work being done by UT through the FIRE Collaboratives is for the future of the country in terms of energy security and finding climate-friendly solutions to meet the ever-increasing energy demands.
“We’re probably looking at 10 to 20 years before we see fusion electricity on the grid. But whenever we get to fusion electricity and fusion energy, it has the potential to provide consistent and continuous energy generation that’s always on and reliable,” he said. “With nuclear power, we’re not dependent on a natural gas line coming into a power plant, or the wind blowing or the sun shining. We’ve got this combination being able to produce hundreds to thousands of megawatts of electricity in power plants that can provide whole cities electricity in a very sustainable way.”
Contact
Rhiannon Potkey (865-974-0683, rpotkey@utk.edu)