A 3D Printed Nuclear Reactor Part?

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Usually most people don’t think about 3D printing and high temperature, however it is possible with 3D printed parts being used in jet engines and rockets. A nuclear reactor is taking it to the extreme and BWX Technologies (BWXT) along with the the group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has designed a process to print parts for a nuclear propulsion system. These parts were made out of molybdenum using electron beam melting. Here is some information from the Department of Energy below:

BWXT successfully 3D-printed core structural parts used in nuclear thermal propulsion system designs. The components were made from molybdenum—a refractory material that can be used in extreme temperatures. Refractory materials like molybdenum are extremely hard to fabricate given the extreme environments needed to create a part. The complex geometries created by the BWXT and ORNL team would have been nearly impossible to manufacture using conventional methods.

Office of Nuclear Energy March 2021 release

I’ve had a chance to visit ORNL personally, it’s like Disney for an engineer. I’ve even had a chance to visit a prototype (non operational) nuclear reactor. There’s some amazing stuff happening there and some amazing advances in 3D printing. Below is a picture of one of the parts. It’s great to see 3D printing manufacturing things that are difficult or impossible to make any other way.

Component artifact geometry fabricated from molybdenum using electron beam melting. Completed molybdenum component. (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)

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