UW-Madison engineers receive $4.6M in DOE nuclear research awards

The U.S. Department of Energy awarded more than $44 million through its Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP) in 2024 to support university-led nuclear energy research and development projects, including a total of $4.6 million for projects led by University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers.

Juliana Pacheco Duarte (PI), an assistant professor of nuclear engineering and engineering physics, received $1.1 million for a project that will demonstrate that power uprates higher than the current state of operation can be reached using accident tolerant fuels in light water reactors while not exceeding reactor safety margins during normal operation and accidents. UW-Madison NEEP Assistant Professor Ben Lindley and assistant scientist WooHyun Jung are co-PIs, along with researchers from North Carolina State University, Idaho National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Constellation, Framatome and GNF. Wisconsin Distinguished Professor Emeritus Michael Corradini and Al Csontos from NEI are collaborators.

Assistant scientist WooHyun Jung (PI) received $1 million for a project that will focus on investigating the impact of Cr-coating on the SiC-SiCf composite cladding of various architectures under normal operating and accident conditions in light water reactors and advanced reactors for the safe and economic deployment of SiC cladding. Kumar Sridharan, Grainger Professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics (NEEP) and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, is a collaborator on the project, along with researchers from General Atomics, Argonne National Laboratory and Pohang University of Science and Technology, South Korea.

NEEP Assistant Professor Yongfeng Zhang (PI) received $1 million for a project that addresses a critical challenge concerning the safety of current light water reactors. Iron-chromium-aluminum alloys are promising materials for nuclear fuel claddings that make current fuels more tolerant to accidents, which rarely occur but can be consequential. These alloys, however, suffer from embrittlement caused by the formation of chromium-rich precipitates called α’. While molybdenum is often added into these alloys to improve the high-temperature mechanical strength, its impact on α’ precipitation is unclear. This project aims at developing a mechanistic understanding on the effects of molybdenum, which serves as a prototyping additive, on α’ precipitation and dislocation loop formation in iron-chromium-aluminum alloys in thermal and irradiation conditions. The researchers will integrate physics-based modeling, aging and irradiation experiments, advanced characterization and artificial intelligence for this project. The new knowledge will be turned into design principles that help identify beneficial additives and optimize the alloy composition. Researchers from the University of Michigan, University of Pittsburgh, and Catalyst Science Solutions LLC are collaborators on the project.

Zhang also received a continuation award ($533,333) for research that complements and enhances ongoing NEUP research. This project will establish an Irradiation-Microstructure-Property-Performance (IMPP) correlation that links initial buffer microstructure with fracture initiation in buffer and progression to the SiC layer in TRISO particles. UW-Madison Mechanical Engineering Associate Professor Ramathasan Thevamaran is a collaborator, along with researchers from North Carolina State University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Mark Anderson (PI), Consolidated Papers Professor in mechanical engineering, received $1 million for a project that aims to experimentally investigate the thermal-hydraulics performance of liquid sodium heat pipes applied to microreactors, with a focus on exploring different design parameters, effects of different parameters on operating performance and understanding the evolution and impact of different failure modes. Greg Nellis, William A. and Irene Ouweneel-Bascom Professor in mechanical engineering, and UW-Madison scientist Tiago Moreira are co-investigators, along with collaborators from Texas A&M University, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Westinghouse.

Paul Wilson, the Grainger Professor of Nuclear Engineering and chair of the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics at UW-Madison, is a collaborator on a project led by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that will develop the fundamental methods and techniques for unstructured adaptive mesh refinement with Monte Carlo tallies. This work will enable a transformative leap forward in speed, accuracy and robustness to enhance the contribution of high-fidelity radiation transport to advanced simulation.

UW-Madison also received an infrastructure award to establish two in situ ion irradiation testing facilities in the UW-Madison Ion Beam Laboratory for the investigation of nuclear materials under mechanical and thermal extremes. Paul Wilson is the PI, with NEEP faculty Charles Hirst and Adrien Couet as collaborators.