A second iteration of INSET is now the only available technology that can rapidly heat materials from room temperature to 2200 degrees Celsius in about five minutes while allowing for quick handling after neutron irradiation. Developed at ORNL with significant design contributions from University of Tennessee graduate student Emily Hutchins, INSET 2.0 is a cost-effective option for conducting multiple experiments both inside and outside a reactor. Because of its versatile design, INSET can be used to evaluate any research reactor with a port diameter greater than eight inches, offering unmatched versatility for high-temperature materials testing.
Through funding provided by the Nuclear Science User Facilities Super Rapid Turnaround Experiment program, INSET was used to perform irradiation testing of coated surrogate particles at The Ohio State University Research Reactor. There, four different nuclear thermal rocket fuel sample surrogates coated in zirconium carbide were placed in INSET and irradiated for two days under repeated temperature cycling.
The experiment team included Wilson, Hutchins, and Bryan Conry, an ORNL post-doc research associate, as well as Pavel Shilenko, a cadet at West Point. Hutchins and Shilenko were the primary operators of the experiment, setting up the INSET furnace and recording data throughout the two-day test.
“I am exceptionally proud of Emily and Pavel,” said Wilson. “Their contributions to this project produced an important milestone for this research, in addition to a learning experience that I hope will shape their future as leaders in nuclear science and engineering.”
Later this spring, the team will conduct post-irradiation analysis at ORNL to assess the coatings’ performance and their ability to protect the fuel under operational conditions.
“The findings from this experiment will represent a crucial step in advancing nuclear thermal propulsion technology for future human space exploration,” said Wilson.
ORNL’s Katherine Montoya, Eddie Lopez Honorato, Craig Gray, Bob Sitterson, Nick Prins and N. Dianne Bull Ezell also contributed to this experiment. The team acknowledges the support of the Ohio State University Nuclear Reactor Laboratory and the assistance of the reactor staff members.
This research is supported by funding from NASA and the Nuclear Science User Facilities’ Super Rapid Turnaround Experiment program.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science. – Liz McCrory
This Oak Ridge National Laboratory news article "Novel nuclear rocket fuel test could accelerate NASA’s Mars mission" was originally found on https://www.ornl.gov/news
