How to create materials for nuclear energy in Russia?

— Your university is known for scientific advances in materials science, metallurgy and mining. In particular, you are developing unmanned technologies. What kind of projects do you currently have in this direction?

— This is the robotization of the mining process. The execution of routine, harmful and dangerous types of work falls on the shoulders of machines without the direct participation of a person in production. We have an interesting project in this direction – our students created the Mark robot for the company Norilsk Nickel as part of the Student Start competition.

“Mark” is a robotic platform with dimensions of 120x120x80 cm, with high permeability, suitable for use in underground works. Each wheel of the platform has its own motor and a vertical axis of rotation for rotation, as well as a system for changing the clearance.

close

one hundred%

NUST MISIS First Vice-Chancellor Sergey Salikhov

Sergey Gnuskov/NUST MISIS Press Service

An assembly is designed for a high-tech lidar sensor on the platform designed for mine exploration (a set of measurements and calculations to assess the spatial aspect of mine studies), scanning the study area and creating its three-dimensionality. models. The platform moves at a speed of 4 km/h, changing its span from 20 cm to 45 cm. Currently, work is underway to create an IT solution to control this robotic platform, including the development of firmware for the main controller.

— Could you tell us about university projects related to nuclear energy?

— The development of nuclear power engineering means the transition to new types of coolants, an increase in operating temperature and pressure, and, of fundamental importance, an increase in service life of 80 years or more.

All this requires the use of materials with fundamentally new properties, the creation of which, due to the classical comprehensive approach, is not rational and does not provide a qualitative transition to a new level of properties.

So how will you create these new materials?

– The main set of material properties is formed primarily during solidification, so the problem can be solved by influencing the growth of the solid phase, which will not only ensure the required level of material quality, but also allow materials with a property gradient to be obtained. , including internal reinforcement . It requires the development of high precision technologies, including controlled fusion, precision machining, high precision casting and additive manufacturing.

It should be noted that the implementation of the solidification control project already gives practical results in the case of an additive process (additive technologies is a method of creating three-dimensional objects, parts or things by adding material layer by layer). The action leads to a controlled change in the phase transition kinetics and as a result the predicted (indicated by the technologist) primary crystal structure.

— What practical results do you expect from using this method?

– First of all, this approach will reduce the development time of promising products by 10 times and increase the utilization rate of materials by up to 90%.

In the field of nuclear energy materials, this will make it possible to reduce the cost of metal products produced by conventional methods by 10-15% and enable the transition to “first try” printing products in additive manufacturing, reducing development time to 75% and small-scale production costs to 90%.

The introduction of digital control of the machine building and metallurgical industries can already have an economic impact in the manufacture of cavities for the reactor vessel by increasing the metal utilization factor by 10-15% and reducing gas and electricity consumption by at least 10%. , which is a tangible indicator and leads us to a resource-efficient, lean economy.

— NUST MISIS also develops technologies for advanced energy systems. Can you tell?

“This is a relatively new technology. The main idea is to shut down the nuclear cycle, switch from fuel to fast neutron reactors from VVER type reactors (water-water power reactor), new nuclear fuel production and an increase in the percentage of so-called fuel combustion used in the power generation process.

Speaking of the development of technologies for advanced energy systems, we again refer to end-to-end quality management at the entire technological stage of the production of responsible engineering products.

The task is precisely to provide high-quality metal products that can perform their functions in aggressive environments such as high temperature, pressure and exposure to high radiation.

This quality can be achieved by influencing the solid phase formation process during sequential surfacing, as well as conventional and powder technologies, the development of technology to produce ultrapure alloys and materials, as well as new materials based on requirements. For the characteristics of the finished product, including recycled raw materials, and for the introduction of digital approaches in the production of products and blanks.

— What is the shortage of engineering and technical experts in the country?

– Definitely.

In recent years, we haven’t paid much attention to the means of production – machine tool construction, heavy and medium machinery construction. All solutions in these areas were purchased from foreign suppliers with engineering and technical support.

It has now become clear that the acquisition of technological dominance sets the task of re-establishing production, and we are faced with such a task.

To date, this is actively being addressed. For example, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation launched a federal project to create advanced engineering schools. NUST MISIS will also have a school called MAST (Materials Science, Additives and End-to-End Technologies), which will be the core of the development of materials science, additives and end-to-end technologies in Russia.

— Will there be new training programs?

— We plan to create two new structural divisions – the Institute of Biomaterials Science and the Institute of Physics and Quantum Engineering.

As part of the biomedical materials and bioengineering direction, we focus on developing new approaches for bioprinting tissues and organs (magnetic bioprinting, pressing skin directly on a patient’s body using a robotic arm), promoting reparative processes, creating technology to determine viability. monitoring the efficacy of cells and tissues and drugs.

In the field of physics and quantum engineering, we aim to develop quantum computing and quantum communication fields based on superconducting and optical qubits. Currently, these areas are at the stage of demonstration experiments and research studies, but the transition of quantum development from laboratories to industry will soon be necessary.

The third task is the development of metallurgical and mining programs. We are engaged in the digitization and greening of mining and metallurgical production. First of all, these are digital twins in mining, the use of these digital and unmanned technologies in mining.