Electricity Generation and Delivery

More information on this project is coming soon!

MetOx Technologies is developing faster manufacturing of low-cost high-temperature superconducting tapes to enable the energy transition, such as supporting more powerful electric grid cables and more powerful magnets to unlock fusion power generation. MetOx will transform its manufacturing process in several areas including improving equipment throughput, material efficiency, and tape performance.

High Temperature Superconductors will increase the production speed and reduce the cost of high-temperature superconducting coated conductor tapes by using a pulsed laser deposition process to support the development of transformational energy technologies including nuclear fusion reactors. By developing tools to expand the area on which the superconducting layers are deposited, the team at High Temperature Superconductors will raise production speeds by five to ten times compared to that of present-day levels while improving the quality and consistency of the materials.

Foundation Alloy Technology Explorations will develop a new class of alloys specifically engineered for powder metallurgy-based processing. These new alloys would be engineered at the atomic level for improved properties and for potential applications in critical reactor components. Foundation Alloy’s integration of new material design with part production could enable rapid delivery times, lower costs, and more consistent part quality.

C-Crete Technologies will develop high-performance nanocomposite kraft papers to improve the insulation of large power transformers. C-Crete’s advanced kraft paper would offer high thermal conductivity, high dielectric strength, low moisture content, and other features that translate to longer transformer lifetimes. This technology could potentially reduce the number of power outages associated with transformer failures, saving the U.S. economy tens of billions of dollars each year.

NK Labs will improve the efficiency of muon production to enable cost-effective muon-catalyzed fusion, a process that can operate at much lower temperatures than traditional approaches to fusion. NK Labs would improve the design of the target that gets bombarded with high-energy protons to generate particles called pions, which rapidly decay into muons that are then routed toward the fusion fuel to catalyze a fusion reaction.

Deep Isolation will test a range of canister designs in boreholes at the Deep Borehole Demonstration Center in Texas and assess US-based supplier capabilities in the hopes of identifying a universal canister design. Advancing a universal canister system from a conceptual development stage to a licensing stage would require full-scale test data, and help enable safe, scalable, and cost-effective disposal of the current stored used nuclear fuel as well as fuels from advanced nuclear reactors in development.

WH-Power (WHP) will develop a high-entropy electrolyte and pulp-based zinc battery that could operate in temperature ranges from -80°C to 80°C and can be used for both residential and grid-scale energy storage applications. WHP’s battery would be inherently safer and lower cost than existing batteries and could be produced from abundant materials that are readily available domestically.