Valve produced using 3D printing technology tested in Olkiluoto

Finnish nuclear power company Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) is at the cutting edge of development. TVO and Fortum carry out a joint test of the first valve featuring a 3D printed housing at the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant. The supplier of the valve housing is Neles. The valve is installed by TVO.
The actual valve inside the 3D printed housing is a standard T5-series ball valve of stainless steel.
Neles is at the forefront of using 3D printing in valve applications. The company started testing the suitability of 3D printing technologies for metal components years ago and supplied the first valves with non pressure retaining, 3D printed metal components in 2018.
“The valve body is a pressure-retaining component and thus its material properties need to be well known. However, industry standards for 3D printed materials are under development. It has been necessary to test the valve body material extensively, and, for example, the tensile strength and impact resistance to make sure it is safe and reliable in the process,” says Jukka Borgman, Director of Technology Development at Neles.
The field tests will provide a lot of valuable information on the feasibility of using 3D printing to produce pressure-retaining parts with significantly quicker delivery times. 3D printing also enables more efficient use of materials and optimized flow paths in noise attenuation trims, delivering superior performance compared to conventionally produced trims.
“3D printing can help us to optimize valves for customer-specific needs in various applications and with all valve types. These tests will also provide valuable information for our product development teams, as they are constantly looking for new ways to improve reliability, performance, and material efficiency,” Borgman adds.
“The 3D printed valve housing, as well as any other 3D components available in the future, provides us with an alternative in a situation where the number of suppliers for nuclear power plants is being reduced. This gives us the possibility to produce a unique component by printing it ourselves”, explains Life Cycle Management Engineer Dino Nerweyi from TVO.
“Fortum, for its part, wishes to contribute to the possibility of utilising 3D printing in the manufacture of safety-classified components for nuclear power plants, in particular. When a component no longer is directly available from manufacturers, 3D printing may offer significant cost savings”, says Design Engineer Tomi Räihä from Fortum.
According to Nerweyi and Räihä, both the technology and knowledge of 3D materials have evolved to a sufficient degree to allow the use of 3D printing also in the nuclear power industry. Field tests provide a lot of valuable information on whether 3D printing could be used in the future to produce components with considerably shorter delivery times.
The size of the valve housing 3D printed for the project is 20 x 40 centimetres. The printer itself is the size of an SUV.