Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)

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.

Robust, affordable, and durable plasma-facing components (PFCs) are key to commercial fusion energy. PFCs must maintain the capability to handle the extreme heat, high-density plasma, high-energy neutrons, and fuel cycling in safe and economical operation. So far, a solution does not exist. Solid PFCs with a tungsten (W) armor, helium (He) cooling, and reduced-activation steel structure may satisfy the demanding requirements. This ORNL-led team will use laser powder-bed-fusion and electron-beam melting to create high-quality, W alloys (crack-free, high-density with acceptable properties) as the armor and reduced-activation, ferritic/martensitic steels as the base structure, with compositionally graded interlayers. They will use computational alloy design to integrate the materials with additive manufacturing. A high-quality integrated structure will promote cost-effective PFC designs for a range of fusion-energy concepts, with unprecedented flexibility for performance and reliability.