Development of Precast Reinforced Concrete Solutions for Safety-Related Nuclear Applications

Achieving the national goal of expanding U.S. nuclear generating capacity to approximately 400 GWe by 2050 will require a construction pace that is far beyond recent nuclear deployment experience. Advanced reactor deployment is often discussed as a reactor design and licensing challenge, but at fleet scale it is also a civil infrastructure challenge. Safety-related reinforced concrete structures are major contributors to nuclear project cost, schedule, workforce demand, and quality assurance burden. For many nuclear facilities, conventional construction relies heavily on cast-in-place (CIP) reinforced concrete, which is effective and familiar but requires extensive field labor, formwork, inspection, curing time, and rework control.
Modularization offers a practical route to faster and more repeatable nuclear construction by shifting a portion of the work from the project site to controlled manufacturing environments. Precast reinforced concrete is especially attractive because it can use an existing industrial base rather than requiring a completely new construction supply chain. The precast industry already has manufacturing facilities, transport logistics, quality control practices, and a trained workforce that could be adapted to nuclear construction. However, direct adoption of conventional precast systems is not sufficient for safety-related nuclear applications because reactor buildings and shielding structures must satisfy demanding requirements for structural capacity, seismic performance, radiation shielding, thermal effects, dimensional tolerance, and connection integrity.
This study is developing a precast reinforced concrete solution tuned for safety-related nuclear applications: layered composite reinforced concrete walls with mechanical connections (LC-MC). This summary paper presents the progress from the first year of work of the project. The core idea is to combine functional layering of concrete mixtures with mechanical connections that emulate the structural continuity of CIP construction. The project is evaluating whether LC-MC walls can reduce construction duration and material usage while satisfying nuclear requirements for shielding, high-temperature operation, structural performance, manufacturability, and constructability.