ORNL, Kyoto Fusioneering to develop Tenn. fusion testing facility

Oak Ridge National Laboratory has announced a partnership with Japan's Kyoto Fusioneering to develop technology for speeding the deployment of commercial fusion energy through the creation of a breeding blanket test facility. The lab said that the partnership will "leverage ORNL's expertise in supercomputing, advanced manufacturing, materials science, and fusion research, and complement KF's UNITY test facilities."

UNITY: The Unique Integrated Testing Facility Program includes the UNITY-1 blanket and thermal cycle test facility in Kyoto, Japan and the UNITY-2 deuterium-tritium fuel cycle facility under construction at Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario, Canada. The new partnership will work toward the creation of UNITY-3 at ORNL. UNITY-3 is expected to be "a world-leading breeding blanket test facility capable of testing blanket concepts in prototypic fusion nuclear conditions."

Through the creation and operation of UNITY-3, ORNL and Kyoto Fusioneering intend to collaborate on the development of experimental infrastructure for testing and validating next-generation tritium breeding blanket systems, which experts consider to be crucial technology for producing the fuel needed to sustain fusion power generation. The work at UNITY-3 will complement the work at UNITY-1 and -2 while closing "critical gaps" that were identified in the Department of Energy's Fusion Science & Technology Roadmap, which was released last October.

Gaps to close: The DOE's latest fusion road map addressed such gaps by pointing out the following:

While the U.S. private sector is investing > $9B to demonstrate sustaining burning plasma on the path to fusion power plants, there remain critical science, materials and technology gaps, such as the breeding and handling of fusion fuels, that must be closed. These critical gaps require innovation and bridging of public and private sectors. . . .

The U.S. will: Build key infrastructure to address critical fusion materials and technology (FM&T) gaps; Innovate and advance the science and engineering of fusion; and Grow the U.S. fusion ecosystem through domestic and international public-private partnerships, fostering new regional consortia, building research FS&T [fusion science and technology] infrastructure and supply chains and fusion manufacturing networks.

The international public-private partnerships called for by the DOE for growing the U.S. fusion sector are also strategic elements of the agency's Tritium Blanket Development Platform under its Fusion Nuclear Science mission.

Focus on Kyoto Fusioneering: Kyoto Fusioneering is a privately funded fusion technology group headquartered in Japan with subsidiaries in the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, and Canada.

According to ORNL, Kyoto Fusioneering "is focused on developing high-performance advanced technologies and integrated systems for commercial fusion power systems, including electron cyclotron resonance heating and alternative plasma heating, tritium fuel processing, and breeding blanket technology for fuel production and power generation."

The new partnership for UNITY-3 builds on an existing relationship between ORNL and Kyoto Fusioneering that is part of the DOE's Innovation Network for Fusion Energy program (about lead-lithium mixtures for fusion blankets) and the DOE's Fusion Innovation Research Engine Collaborative program (about liquid metal blanket concepts).

ORNL and Kyoto Fusioneering are also codeveloping plans for public-private technology commercialization and for exchanges of technical expertise and personnel between the organizations.

Build-Innovate-Grow: Bibake Uppal, the vice president and head of Kyoto Fusioneering America, said of the collaboration, "Partnering with ORNL allows us to tackle one of fusion's hardest remaining cross-cutting challenges: validating breeding blanket performance in a nuclear environment."

Troy Carter, director of ORNL's Fusion Energy Division, said, "Moving breeding blanket technology from theory to real-world application is crucial in realizing a path to fusion energy. By combining ORNL's deep expertise in fusion systems, materials and blanket research with Kyoto Fusioneering's unique technology and engineering expertise, and integrated test platforms, this partnership can strengthen the public-private fusion ecosystem and support the commercialization of fusion energy."