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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.
A. Busigin, G. I. D. Williams, T. C. W. Wong, D. Kulczynski, A. Reid
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 54 | Number 2 | August 2008 | Pages 333-336
Technical Paper | Tritium in Fission | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1825
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Ontario Power Generation Nuclear (OPGN) has a 4 x 880 MWe CANDU nuclear station at its Darlington Nuclear Division located in Bowmanville. The station has been operating a Tritium Removal Facility (TRF) and a D2O station Upgrading Plant (SUP) since 1989. Both facilities were designed with a Distributed Control System (DCS) and programmable logic controllers (PLC) for process control. This control system was replaced with a DCS only, in 1998. A dynamic plant simulator was developed for the Darlington TRF (DTRF) and the SUP, as part of the computer control system replacement. The simulator was used to test the new software, required to eliminate the PLCs. The simulator is now used for operator training and testing of process control software changes prior to field installation. Dynamic simulation will be essential for the ITER isotope separation system, where the process is more dynamic than the relatively steady-state DTRF process. This paper describes the development and application of the DTRF and SUP dynamic simulator, its benefits, architecture, and the operational experience with the simulator
