Argonne National Laboratory, a research center operated by UChicago Argonne, for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), has submitted the first draft of an ASME Code Case proposing Laser Powder Bed Fusion as a permitted manufacturing process for high-temperature nuclear reactor components.
If adopted, the proposal would strengthen the nuclear supply chain, reduce manufacturing lead times, and expand design flexibility for critical structural components, areas where the industry has long been constrained by the limits of conventional fabrication methods.
The Regulatory Gap Matters
Nuclear energy operates under strict codes that dictate how structural components can be made. Until now, additive manufacturing had no formal pathway into those codes for high-temperature applications, effectively locking the technology out of one of the sectors that could benefit most from it.
Qualifying LPBF under ASME standards would open the door to shorter manufacturing lead times, greater design flexibility, and a more resilient supply chain for critical reactor components, advantages that have long been available to other industries but remained out of reach for nuclear.
The submission is the product of a coordinated research effort spanning four U.S. national laboratories. Researchers from Argonne, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory, worked together under the Department of Energy’s Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies program. At Argonne, the effort was led by Mark Messner, Xuan Zhang, and Yiren Chen, working out of the laboratory’s dedicated Additive Manufacturing facility.
What Comes Next
The laboratory’s next focus is compressing the time it takes to qualify new materials and processes.
Rather than relying solely on the established empirical methods ASME uses to analyze how materials behave under long-term stress, Argonne intends to bring machine learning into the process, not to replace that foundation, but to extend its reach. Real-time process monitoring, data analytics, and AI-driven tools are being developed in parallel to build a more complete digital picture of how printed components perform.
That trajectory fits within a larger federal push: the DOE’s Genesis Mission, which is linking national laboratories, datasets, and high-performance computing resources with the explicit goal of moving scientific and energy research from discovery to application faster than conventional methods allow.
The Qualification Bottleneck Holding 3D Printing Out of Nuclear
Most current applications of additive manufacturing in nuclear involve non-critical, non-load-bearing parts, selected precisely because they fall below the threshold where full regulatory qualification is required. Structural components, where the technology’s potential impact is greatest, have remained out of reach. The fundamental difficulty is that qualifying an additively manufactured component differs from qualifying a material. That gap has no resolution within existing ASME codes, and addressing it is the central purpose of Argonne’s submission.
Several organizations have been working to push past that boundary from different directions. In an interview with Ryan Dehoff, director of ORNL’s MDF, he said the facility has been advancing LPBF for nuclear applications under the DOE’s AMMT program, applying the technology to materials such as 316H stainless steel for high-temperature structural use, with a focus on tackling manufacturing certification challenges and moving AM into mainstream nuclear production.
Elsewhere, Huntington Ingalls Industries installed 3D printed components in naval nuclear platforms in 2025, as part of a growing portfolio of approved parts, positioning additive manufacturing as a tool for lead-time reduction and supply resilience within nuclear-grade production environments.
Argonne’s Code Case submission targets a higher bar than any of these precedents. Rather than qualifying a single component type or working within existing regulatory carve-outs, it seeks to establish LPBF as a formally recognized manufacturing process under ASME codes for high-temperature structural applications. If approved, it would create a replicable pathway for additive manufacturing to be further incorporated into nuclear manufacturing.
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Featured image shows Argonne researchers are using 3D printing to investigate how to strengthen the nuclear supply chain. Image via Argonne National Laboratory.
