“This paper summarizes the important aspects of silicon carbide composites as a structural material in nuclear fusion and advanced nuclear fission applications.”

This paper reviews a topic of great interest to the nuclear fusion and advanced nuclear fission reactor community. Silicon carbide composites represent an exciting new structural material that has exhibited tremendous promise for these applications.

This paper summarizes the important aspects of silicon carbide composites as a structural material in nuclear fusion and advanced nuclear fission applications. This summary includes the recent advances made in the development of these materials for these applications and their performance in relevant nuclear and chemical environments.

Fusion energy is a very promising future source of energy produced by the same reaction that fuels the sun. Capturing this energy will require many technological advances including the development of new materials. Silicon carbide composites exhibit properties that will allow fusion energy to achieve the goal of high-temperature operation and therefore to operate at high efficiencies. This paper summarizes the properties of silicon carbide that will contribute to a high efficiency fusion energy system as well as the properties that need improvement.

The work at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory began with a workshop chaired by Russell H. Jones and Glenn E. Lucas (UCSB) entitled "Ceramic Matrix Composites for Structural Applications in Fusion Reactors," held May 21-22, 1990. At this workshop, the critical issues in the use of ceramic matrix composites in a fusion nuclear environment were identified, and research was initiated to address these issues. The recent publication on this topic summarizes some of the tremendous progress made by the international fusion reactor materials community to address these issues as well as fundamental research conducted on the radiation stability of SiC. I and others at the PNNL became involved in this research because of our research interests in high-temperature materials and the effects of the chemical, nuclear, and thermal environments on these materials.