Generation

Direct lithium tritide (LiT) electrolysis uses advanced solid lithium-conducting electrolytes to reduce the complexity and footprint of tritium extraction from breeding-blanket materials, such as lead-lithium, in fusion-energy systems. Savannah River National Laboratory’s new process eliminates the need for expensive equipment like centrifugal systems and molten salts used in other proposed technologies. The process improvements enable the reaction to be performed in existing process vessels such as the blanket buffer tank and reduces the entire tritium-extraction system footprint.

The current fusion reactor conceptual design cycle can take many years, increase costs, delay schedules, risk inconsistencies, and compromise learning and innovation. Detailed engineering design is even more challenging and lengthy. ORNL and its partners will develop an integrated simulation environment, the Fusion Energy Reactor Models Integrator (FERMI), to simulate the first wall and blanket for power extraction and tritium breeding. FERMI will substantially shorten the overall design cycle and reduce costs while significantly improving accuracy.

Fusion power cannot be realized without vacuum pumps. The vacuum technology needed to operate a commercial fusion power plant does not currently exist, however. Although existing vacuum technology could be adapted to meet the challenges posed by fusion energy, a radically new pump oil treatment and recycling system may be necessary to handle tritium removal and radiation damage.

The University of California, San Diego, will investigate the potential of using a continuously renewable wall to protect the first walls of fusion reactors from large plasma heat loads and sputtering (where solid material ejects microscopic particles after its bombardment by plasma or gas particles), while also allowing tritium recovery. The project team seeks to develop a low-atomic-number renewable wall for fusion devices that contains a slurry composed of carbon pebbles, ceramics, and a volatile binder.

The University of Michigan will develop physics-based, model-centric, and scalable capabilities, data-enabled via AI-enhanced algorithms, to achieve unprecedented integrated state awareness for advanced reactor power plants.

ULC Technologies and its partners, PSU Applied Research Lab (PSU ARL) and Brookhaven National Lab (BNL), will develop a novel Cold Spray Additive Manufacturing (CSAM) process for fabricating stainless-steel pipes inside aging gas distribution pipelines. Using methane as the carrier gas, the operation can be performed in a live, natural gas pipeline resulting in zero service disruptions. Stainless steel offers high resistance to corrosion, compatibility with standard pipe fittings, and low permeability to hydrogen for future hydrogen transport.

General Electric (GE) Global Research will develop PipeLine Underground Trenchless Overhaul (PLUTO)—a long-distance, minimally invasive pipe repair system that provides structural rehabilitation of gas pipelines faster, more efficiently, and less expensively than traditional open-cut excavation replacement. The GE team, including Warren Environmental and Garver, will develop and integrate a highly dexterous long-range pipe-crawling (robotic) system, high-speed non-destructive evaluation technologies, and advanced spray-on thick-coating epoxy lining systems.

Southwest Research Institute will apply energy storage to a natural gas, direct-fired supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) power generation cycle (Allam-Fetvedt cycle with near 100% carbon capture) by incorporating oxygen storage adjacent to the air separation unit (ASU). By operating the ASU at higher capacities when power from alternative energies is available (e.g., wind power at night or solar photovoltaic power during the day) and storing liquid oxygen (LOX), greater output from the power plant can be achieved during times of peak electricity demand.

GE Research will optimize an oxy-combustion natural gas-fired turbine—the Allam-Fetvedt cycle—for flexible generation on a grid with high (VRE) penetration at near-zero carbon emissions. The team will use gas or liquid buffering tanks and tight thermal integration between the air separation unit (ASU) and the oxy-combustion turbine. The proposed technology easily separates the CO2 and H2O in the flue gas of an oxy-combustor. The post-combustion outlet gas is more easily separated into water and CO2 to the pipeline, thereby lowering the electricity costs of grids with high levels of VRE.

The tokamak is the most scientifically mature fusion energy concept, which confines hot plasma in the shape of a torus (similar to a donut). This plasma is controlled in part by a central solenoid electromagnet. Using high-temperature superconductors (HTS) and an innovative design, Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) and its partners aim to build a central solenoid capable of quickly changing (“fast ramping”) its current and magnetic field, while also being robust enough to survive many thousands of cycles.