Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)

For more than 60 years, fusion research and development (R&D) has focused on attaining the required fuel density, temperature, and energy confinement time of the plasma fuel of a viable fusion energy system. Currently, relatively modest investments have been made in the required and equally critical enabling technologies and advanced materials surrounding the plasma fuel. The GAMOW program supports innovative R&D that will help establish both the technical and commercial viability of (i) all the required technologies and subsystems between the fusion plasma and the balance of plant, (ii) cost-effective, high-efficiency, high-duty-cycle driver technologies, and (iii) novel fusion materials and advanced manufacturing of these materials.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) aims to cost-effectively fabricate, at scale, high-performance, oxide-dispersion-strengthened (ODS) steel with advanced-manufacturing methods for fusion breeding-blanket applications. PNNL will enable cost-effective production of oxide-dispersion strengthened steel by consolidating and extruding powders made with gas atomization reaction synthesis (GARS) in just one step by using first-of-a-kind shear-assisted processing and extrusion (ShAPE). Solid-state dynamic shear deformation during ShAPE will offer highly distributed nucleation of nano-oxides after heat treatment, which is essential to achieving scalable production, competitive costs, and the required tensile and creep strength. In parallel, additive manufacturing will be used to build complex fusion components from GARS powders. Finally, the quality of parts produced through these advanced-manufacturing methods will be demonstrated by testing critical high-temperature properties. Such scalable, cost-effective fabrication of ODS steels may enable efficient power conversion cycles (≥40%) at operating temperatures beyond 900 K in future fusion power plants.