Promoting the regulatory acceptance of combined ion and neutron irradiation for material degradation in nuclear reactors

The Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies (AMMT) program within the Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy has developed its current recommendation for promoting the use of combined ion and neutron irradiation data for the accelerated qualification of nuclear reactor materials. This plan is intended to provide a collaborative path forward that can be adopted by academia, national laboratories, and industry, and has been developed with input from the regulatory research arm of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). In the context of nuclear energy, the U.S. Department of Energy is responsible for nuclear energy-related research and development and promotion of nuclear technologies, while the NRC is an independent regulatory agency responsible for the safety of the civilian use of nuclear technologies. These two agencies thus have distinct but interconnected roles regarding the development and deployment of nuclear technologies. As the needs for the nuclear energy industry continue to evolve in the 21st century, it is critical to set the pace for timely industry adoption of new technological solutions that also can be accepted by regulatory agencies. New ways of collecting and utilizing data for regulatory purposes have become a necessity.