ORNL and Idaho Lab 3D Print Nuclear Pressure Vessels With AI Guidance

What the labs are building

Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory have launched a joint effort to qualify large metal pressure vessels made with wire arc additive manufacturing. The goal is to give the U.S. nuclear industry a domestic source for parts that are currently made by forging, a process limited by domestic capacity.

The collaboration was announced August 19 at ORNL's Materials and Manufacturing Innovation Days event. The two labs will combine ORNL's wire arc 3D printing expertise at the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility with Idaho National Laboratory's AI and nuclear engineering knowledge.

Why pressure vessels matter

Pressure vessels sit at the core of many energy systems. Nuclear reactors, chemical plants, oil and gas infrastructure, hydrogen storage, and aerospace applications all rely on components that must contain high pressure without failure. Domestic forging capacity for these parts is stretched thin, and the U.S. nuclear expansion roadmap will need more of them.

Wire arc additive manufacturing, or WAAM, melts metal wire with electric arcs to build large metal parts layer by layer. It can produce components weighing thousands of pounds at lower cost than forging for complex geometries. But the nuclear industry cannot adopt a new manufacturing process without rigorous qualification: every part must be proven safe before it enters service.

The MedUSA platform

ORNL's MedUSA printer uses three coordinated robotic arms to weld large metal structures. In July, the team used it to produce a steel pressure vessel measuring about 3 feet by 5 feet, displayed at the M2IND event. That part demonstrated the team can scale WAAM to vessel-sized components using a steel alloy relevant to nuclear applications.

Researchers also produced neutron sensor brackets for Antares Nuclear's R1 Mark-0 microreactor, which achieved criticality at Idaho National Laboratory in June. That early run gave the team real data on how the process performs on production-grade nuclear hardware.

AI for real-time qualification

The big technical challenge is qualification. Today, pressure vessels are tested after manufacturing, which adds time and cost. ORNL and Idaho National Laboratory want to use sensors, AI, and simulation to verify a part's quality while it is still being printed.

Patxi Fernandez-Zelaia, ORNL lead researcher, put it plainly: the team wants to achieve born-qualified pressure vessel components using data gathered during printing to confidently assess their worthiness for extreme environments.

Jorgen Rufner, Idaho National Laboratory group lead for advanced manufacturing, explained that the project will evaluate a part's performance in real time during printing rather than waiting for post-production testing. Integrating AI with the print data could cut qualification time dramatically.

Shannon Bragg-Sitton, Idaho National Laboratory associate laboratory director, said the AI tools developed under INL's Prometheus program will help accelerate reactor designs and manufacturing methods while meeting demand from AI data centers and communities.

What comes next

Beyond nuclear energy, the same WAAM and AI qualification approach could serve chemical refining, oil and gas, defense, and aerospace. Large metal structural components are a bottleneck across those industries, and domestic sourcing is a strategic priority for all of them.

ORNL's Manufacturing Demonstration Facility remains the nation's only large-scale open-access research institution for early-stage advanced manufacturing. Companies interested in qualifying WAAM parts for regulated industries will likely find themselves working through that facility in the coming years.