The chemical vapor infiltration furnace at BWXT’s Lynchburg Technology Center in Lynchburg, Va. (Photo: BWXT)
BWX Technologies (BWXT) has achieved a key milestone in its project to additively manufacture advanced forms of TRISO fuel for Generation IV advanced nuclear reactors. The Lynchburg Technology Center of subsidiary company BWXT Advanced Technologies, located in Lynchburg, Va., has successfully installed and tested a chemical vapor infiltration (CVI) furnace that solidifies pre-forms that are then filled with TRISO particles, a fuel consisting of carbon and silicon layers surrounding a uranium kernel.
ARDP advancement: The BWXT CVI furnace, which was manufactured by AVS Inc., represents the last piece of equipment needed to execute BWXT’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program project for the Department of Energy. The company now intends to load uranium nitride (UN) TRISO into additively manufactured fuel forms. The company states that this TRISO product has “a higher mass of uranium per unit volume than traditional TRISO compacts [and is] designed to be more cost-effective with a longer reactor lifespan, potentially reducing overall reactor system costs.”
BWXT currently produces uranium oxycarbide (UCO) TRISO for the Department of Defense’s Strategic Capabilities Office demonstration microreactor program called Project Pele, as well as UN TRISO for ARDP. These existing fuel manufacturing lines, together with the capabilities stemming from the new equipment, allow BWXT to manufacture diverse forms of UN and UCO TRISO particles and traditional compacts or chemically densified complex geometries filled with TRISO particles.
Fuel fulfillment: The company now has the capability to ramp up its commercial TRISO manufacturing to support its BWXT Advanced Nuclear Reactor (BANR) program and to supply fuel for other TRISO users.
BWXT has a cooperation agreement with the Wyoming Energy Authority to explore locations for a TRISO fuel fabrication facility in that state to support the emerging advanced reactor market. The company also has a cooperative agreement with a subsidiary of Tata Chemicals to explore the deployment of BANR commercial reactors at a soda ash site in Green River, Wyo.
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