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National labs drive nuclear innovations and uprates for the U.S. fleet
As the United States faces surging electricity demand driven by artificial intelligence, data centers, and a push to bring manufacturing back home, Idaho National Laboratory is leading an effort to modernize and expand the nation’s nuclear power capabilities by revamping the Department of Energy’s Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) Program.
Sung Jin Lee, Michael Ickes, Jeffrey L. Arndt, Michael Epstein, Asfaq Patel, Paolo Ferroni
Nuclear Technology | Volume 210 | Number 4 | April 2024 | Pages 666-680
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2197667
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Westinghouse is developing a lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR) as its next-generation utility-scale nuclear power plant. To support its development, Westinghouse and its partners are building 10 test facilities to demonstrate key LFR phenomena, materials, and components in liquid lead. These test infrastructures are distributed across several institutions, and this paper focuses on those located within Westinghouse. It describes three state-of-the-art test rigs being installed in the Westinghouse facility in Springfields, United Kingdom, to test materials in liquid lead and to investigate key LFR phenomena, which will also be used to validate modeling and simulation tools. These facilities address material corrosion/erosion testing (MELECOR), lead freezing and under-lead viewing testing (LEFREEZ), and primary heat exchanger failure testing (LEWIN). This paper also describes the first liquid-lead test system to become operational at Westinghouse at the company’s site in Churchill, Pennsylvania, i.e., a test rig named HELMET to conduct tensile tests in a molten-lead environment to investigate the potential susceptibility of LFR candidate materials to liquid-metal embrittlement.