The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E) announced $29.8 million for 13 projects to develop next-generation materials critical to commercializing fusion power. These teams will explore promising alloy design spaces and manufacturing processes to strengthen a fusion power plant’s first wall—the interior surface facing the plasma—and lengthen its service life. This would potentially lower operational expenses and downtime in future commercial plants.
The goal of these projects, managed through the Creating Hardened And Durable fusion first Wall Incorporating Centralized Knowledge (CHADWICK) program, is to discover or develop a class of first wall materials that will maintain design performance over the lifetime of a fusion power plant. Overcoming this challenge supports the Biden-Harris Administration’s goal to accelerate commercial fusion, as stated in its Bold Decadal Vision for Commercial Fusion Energy.
As part of this funding, researchers at Ames National Laboratory will receive $3,000,000 to investigate how tailored tungsten-rich refractory multi-principal-element alloys can address the critical lack of materials that can survive the first-wall environment in fusion power plants. The proposed project will create a new high temperature material using tungsten, vanadium, rhenium, and other elements with high melting points, and establish a manufacturing process to commercially manufacture the materials with assistance from plasma technology.