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Colin Judge: Testing structural materials in Idaho’s newest hot cell facility
Idaho National Laboratory’s newest facility—the Sample Preparation Laboratory (SPL)—sits across the road from the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF), which started operating in 1975. SPL will host the first new hot cells at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) in 50 years, giving INL researchers and partners new flexibility to test the structural properties of irradiated materials fresh from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) or from a partner’s facility.
Materials meant to withstand extreme conditions in fission or fusion power plants must be tested under similar conditions and pushed past their breaking points so performance and limitations can be understood and improved. Once irradiated, materials samples can be cut down to size in SPL and packaged for testing in other facilities at INL or other national laboratories, commercial labs, or universities. But they can also be subjected to extreme thermal or corrosive conditions and mechanical testing right in SPL, explains Colin Judge, who, as INL’s division director for nuclear materials performance, oversees SPL and other facilities at the MFC.
SPL won’t go “hot” until January 2026, but Judge spoke with NN staff writer Susan Gallier about its capabilities as his team was moving instruments into the new facility.
V. Romanello et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 1 | January 2012 | Pages 262-267
Fusion-Fission Hybrids and Transmutation | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A13430
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The performances of three different types of innovative transmutation systems have been investigated in order to assess in a comparative way their potential to manage nuclear waste arising in a geographical region, where different countries have different policies with respect to nuclear energy development, but share the objective of a common optimized waste management strategy in order to minimize the waste masses sent to a geological repository. The three systems are 1) a critical low conversion ratio fast reactor (LCFR); 2) an accelerator driven system (ADS) and 3) a hybrid fission-fusion system (FFH). In order to simplify the comparison, the three systems have been loaded with comparable fuels, in particular with the same Pu to Minor Actinides (MA) ratio. A waste management scenario study has been performed: the results show that, apart from the technological readiness of each single option, the performances, in terms e.g. of time needed to eliminate specific spent fuel inventories or in terms of reduction of decay heat and radiotoxicity in a deep geological repository, are rather comparable.