ORNL and University of Tennessee to Study Nuclear Fusion Impact on Reactor Materials

By Will SoutterSep 13 2012

Nuclear Fusion holds great potential as a sustainable and limitless source of energy. However, lack of knowledge of the operating limits of materials used to build reactors has significantly hampered commercialization of nuclear fusion energy.

In order to counter the limitations to harnessing nuclear fusion energy, researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and University of Tennessee at Knoxville in conjunction with seven other research institutes have begun to study the effect of fusion on surface of materials lining the reactor.

Nuclear fusion is a safe phenomenon in comparison to nuclear fission technology currently in use for energy generation. While fission is the splitting up of an atom into two smaller radioactive atoms with long radio-active life, fusion is the process of two or more smaller atoms combining to form a single non-radioactive atom. Even though nuclear fusion energy will not pose a challenge in the form of radioactive spent fuel management, the high energy neutron released during the fusion process can damage the reactor materials. The researchers will employ high-performance computers like the Kraken from the University of Tennessee and Jaguar from ORNL to assess the effect of bombarding reactor material surface with energetic neutrons and ions. This will help them build computational tools to predict material behavior with which they can assess new materials and new designs for reactors that can withstand the high energy bombardments from fusion. The material property altering reactions occur within a nanosecond. But the exact value of the changes can be determined only over the long term. The researchers are hence trying to develop models to extend the period of interaction to decades to understand the long-term impact. It is possible that existing materials may not be suitable for lining nuclear fusion reactors.