NEURONE project billet leaving the caster and entering the product straightener

The NEURONE (Neutron Irradiation of Advanced Steels) consortium is a GBP12 million (USD15 million) collaboration between UKAEA's Materials Division and academic and industry partners across the UK, as well as international partners, which provide access to neutron irradiation facilities. Academic partners include the University of Swansea, University of Sheffield, University of Birmingham, Imperial College London, University of Manchester, University of Bristol, University of Strathclyde Glasgow and University of Oxford. Two industry partner organisations - the Materials Processing Institute (MPI) and Sheffield Forgemasters - are involved as well as the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation.

The consortium was established in April 2023 to research, test and develop steels to operate at higher temperatures compared with conventional counterparts. This will maximise the capacity of fusion machines to extract heat, which is used to power turbines and create electricity, improving the overall efficiency of fusion power plants.

UKAEA - the UK's national organisation responsible for researching and delivering fusion energy - has now announced that the consortium has successfully produced fusion-grade reduced-activation ferritic-martensitic (RAFM) steel on an industrial scale, using a seven-tonne Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) at the Materials Processing Institute in Middlesborough.

"One of the major challenges for delivering fusion energy is developing structural materials able to withstand the extreme temperatures (at least up to 650°C) and high neutron loads required by future fusion powerplants," said David Bowden, group team leader for Materials Science and Engineering at UKAEA and NEURONE programme lead.

The high temperatures and radiation levels caused by the high neutron loads arise as a result of the fusion reaction. The structural materials therefore serve an important role in maintaining the integrity of the fusion power plant under these conditions.

According to UKAEA, based on Electric Arc Furnace technology, with enhanced purification and thermomechanical protocols, this approach has the potential to dramatically decrease production costs by up to 10 times compared with conventional RAFM counterparts, utilising existing and readily scalable infrastructure within the supply chain.

The Materials Processing Institute led the trials which enabled the manufacture, testing and analysis of specialist high temperature steels initially at laboratory scale leading to industrial scale trials in their Electric Arc Furnace.

"As the only sovereign UK steel research facility able to produce RAFM steel at this scale, this is a groundbreaking moment for nuclear fusion R&D," said Richard Birley, NEURONE project lead at the Materials Processing Institute. "The production of 5.5 tonnes of fusion-grade RAFM steel lays the foundation for cost-effective manufacturing of these types of fusion steel for future commercial fusion programmes.

"NEURONE plans to produce advanced variants of RAFM steel, capable of operating up to 650°C - a stretch target, given the solid-state physics of irradiated materials behaviour. Developing these types of steel could also benefit adjacent industries that require high-strength, high-temperature structural steels, such as nuclear fission or petrochemicals. The programme also intends to produce an optimised advanced RAFM alloy using the electric arc furnace at a similar multi-tonne scale to the best EU developmental fusion (RAFM) steel (EUROFER 97)."

The NEURONE project is expected to run until March 2028.