Leaders in nuclear reactor design

Naval Nuclear Laboratory develops advanced naval nuclear propulsion technology, for the safety and reliability of our Navy’s submarine and aircraft carrier Fleets. We train the Sailors who operate our reactors.

Our Story

Product Lines

Propulsion Plant Design

Deliver the most advanced, capable submarine and aircraft carrier nuclear propulsion plants in the world.

Technology Development

Innovate and leverage state-of-the-art technologies and test facilities to deliver enhanced capabilities and timely support to the existing fleet, meet aggressive performance and cost requirements for future ships, and maintain the U.S. Navy's maritime preeminence.

Spent Fuel Processing

Support the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program’s mission through transportation & processing spent nuclear fuel for packaging and safe storage after removal from the Fleet.

Fleet Support

Maximize Fleet readiness & operational capability, through design improvements and engineering support that keep the nuclear powered Fleet on station and mission ready.

Navy Training

Qualify staff to operate nuclear powered aircraft carriers & submarines. Develop state-of-the-art simulators, training tools, and modern educational facilities.

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Our Innovation in Action

Additive Manufacturing

2:32

Transcript

Steven Attanasio [00:18]

It’s really, I think, the next generation of manufacturing metal parts. You take a digital 3D model and you use it to drive a laser beam or an electron beam in a pattern. You put metal powder or metal wire underneath it, it melts and it very quickly solidifies and it forms a part just in the shape that you want, so that digital model becomes the part.

That’s really exciting.

James Eliou [00:43]

Rather than focusing on the feasibility of manufacturing an engineer can focus their design efforts towards increasing the efficiency of their parts such that their parts will have increased capabilities in the end product

Tressa White [00:57]

As a materials engineer, I get to look at the same old alloys in a totally new and different way

Andy Turnbull [1:03]

Now this isn’t replacing traditional machining, but it’s more of a supplement. It’s really interesting whenever we are able to take a look at a part on the computer, we’re able to look at ways that we can reduce weight or take away mass

Tressa White [1:15]

Additive manufacturing is really a more precise, you can have strength in different directions, you can have compliance in other directions

James Eliou [1:24]

There’s a lot of different capabilities that additive manufacturing can achieve that are outside the realm of traditional manufacturing

Steven Attanasio [1:32]

A part that we are right now, we might have 10 different individual parts that we have to weld together or use bolts, additive manufacturing allows you to maybe to make it as one part. One printed part with one model.

Andy Turnbull [1:45]

Thinking that you no longer have to maintain a warehouse full of parts, but the possibility that you may just have to maintain a database of files and then be able to print them off at will, I think the full potential has yet to be realized…

Tressa White [2:03]

You can get rid of bolts in inconvenient places

Steven Attanasio [2:04]

Anything that goes on the ship, failure is not an option. So that’s a big part of what we do, so if the ship needs a part quickly, we can get it to them, get them back on station defending the nation doing the work that they’re supposed to be doing.

M-290 Innovation

2:03

Transcript

Doug Lords [00:22]

My name is Doug and I’m currently an operations of nuclear fuel handler. Currently involved in the M-290 program the type-Y(sp) canister buffering process for the Enterprise fuel. The interaction that we’ve had, that we’ve seen in the engineering side and the operations side is something that I haven’t ever witnessed here before at NRF. Engineering involved operations very early on in the process of the M-290 uh program. We got involved in helping develop the equipment and procedures and they brought in the lifting and handling personnel, the crane operators, the nuclear fuel handlers, and it was this interaction that I think helped develop the program and the success that we are today. A lot of the equipment and tools that we use here in the M-290 program are large and rather heavy. One of the things that we use is what’s called the millennium torque tool. It’s a pneumatic torque gun that we use to work on the lift plate adapter on the M-290 and this aids in us lifting it off of the rail car. This torque gun that we have to use weighs 30 pounds. It’s heavy and awkward to use. One of the developments that we came up with between engineering and operations was the use of a fully articulating arm that has a zero gravity reel suspended from it. And it makes the tool virtually weightless and cuts down on the fatigue of the nuclear worker. As we started the process, there were little things that we changed with the procedures and the equipment. Things to make it more streamlined for us. But really what we got from our engineering staff was top quality. We have strong innovative culture on our team. Many of us come from different careers and backgrounds, each one brings a different quality and skill. This was used in the startup process to create the highly productive program that we are today.

Rapid Prototyping

2:59

Transcript

Jeff Leveillee [00:22]

We call it the Rapid Prototyping Lab because we’ve always had that name and it’s actually what we use the technology for. But out in the real world, it’s called 3D printing or additive manufacturing. We take a CAD object that’s designed by all our engineers and designers and we essentially slice it up into whatever the machine’s resolution can be. Very small thickness and measured in thousandths of an inch. And then we can in turn make a paper model or a plastic model and tweak that resolution to our advantage. One of our machines is called the M Core Iris, its consumable is paper. So it can take sheets of paper and layer by layer, at four thousandths of an inch build your object that you’re feeding it. It’s a unique technology and it’s using a tungsten carbide knife to cut out the geometry. And then it will lay glue on the entire sheet of paper to hold it in place. And then densely glue where the object was cut out. The process is called selective deposition lamination. And so, sheet by sheet, it’s drawn into and cut, glued, and then a new sheet comes in and the process repeats.

These machines behind me use a technology called FDM, which is fuse deposition modelling or filament deposition modelling, it takes very small filament and it melts into those layers that I talked about. So, these machines are capable of going down to five thousandths, seven, ten, or thirteen thousandths of an inch in order to build your object, to additively manufacture the object you’re looking for. And end up with kind of crazy geometry that could never be manufactured by any other method. It actually accelerates a lot of the design process because an engineer can work with our design crew and come up with 3D designs which, you know, from a board was a whole revolutionary step to go into 3D CAD. But then take that CAD to the next level. You know, take that model that not only drives the drawing, but can also drive additive manufacturing or 3D printing. And in no time at all, they can actually see how their parts interact. The technology is constantly advancing so that they can produce extremely accurate parts at a low cost, um, almost overnight. You know, we support flow tests and things that in traditional methods could not be manufactured easily, and if they could, it would take months and months and months. And here we are, turning it around overnight or over a weekend. It’s extremely fun to be able to take something that’s someone’s idea, or something we’ve never touched before and either build a scaled version of it or a full-fledged end use part. That’s immeasurable as far as how fun it can be.

Virtual Reality

2:20

Transcript

“Voice of GOD” [00:23]

Virtual reality really is the, that next computing platform. It unburdens us of the spatial and temporal limits for experiencing things. So you can be anywhere, from anywhere, and do anything. Whether that allows us to do, is reduce some of the costs of building full-fledged hardware devices and actually allow people to feel present and in the environment and feel that visceral reaction to real events that might be happening now only virtually, but they feel real. And so you can effectively train people with a lot lower overhead and a lot less cost with achieving those goals.

Ron Davidson [1:04]

Virtual reality presents an almost unlimited canvas to provide training, education, and excitement for the Sailors. It’s a total immersion into an environment is through visual, audio, and soon to be touch stimulation. You can have an entire submarine at your disposal using a headset and a small computer.

Shawn Perkins [1:16]

It’s eye opening on so many levels. And challenging. It’s new. It’s out there in industry. Leveraging it for our Program and what we do every day is exciting to me um to take us into the future and provide better training to the Navy. Um, more immersive training

“Voice of GOD” [1:46]

As the technology advances, it’s going to become even more important and more flexible in five years, ten years, something that we haven’t even conceived of at this point in time due to technological advances.

Ron Davidson [1:56]

What I get a lot of satisfaction out of is providing something for the students, for the Sailors

Shawn Perkins [2:03]

Its stuff I really never thought I’d be doing at work. I can learn it on the outside and directly apply it to work on something that is new and not everybody is going to get a chance to work on, but so far, it looks like I am, and that’s thrilling.