Nuclear Energy Components (NEC) is starting work with the Nuclear AMRC to develop environmentally-friendly machining techniques which will reduce the cost, lead time, and risk of high-value nuclear components.
The project is funded by the UK government’s Nuclear Innovation Programme, and is part of a GBP 40M investment in advanced nuclear technologies.
The new year-long project, called Process Improvement Through CO2 Cooling (PITCO2C), will develop the technology to take it closer to production for 316L stainless steel, and demonstrate its benefits for the production of fuel assembly components.
NEC will work with the Nuclear AMRC to develop a rotary gas connector for retrofitting a CO2 coolant unit to legacy machine tools, removing barriers to adoption for the supply chain. The prototype connector will be tested on one of NEC’s large-scale milling machines, and at TSP Engineering in Workington, Cumbria.
The Nuclear AMRC team will also work with NEC to model the financial impact of adopting supercritical CO2 in place of replacing traditional coolants. By optimizing the cutting parameters for tool life and productivity, machining costs could potentially be cut by half.
