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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.
Masahiro Kinoshita
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 9 | Number 3 | May 1986 | Pages 492-498
Technical Paper | Tritium System | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24736
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An efficient dynamic simulation code for hydrogen isotope distillation columns is developed. Because of the great dimensionality and stiffness of the basic ordinary differential equations to be integrated, the long computing time required is often the major stumbling block in computer simulation work for column dynamics. Publicly available integration algorithms are reviewed and some are tested. The Ballard-Brosilow algorithm is chosen as the most attractive one in terms of both stability and simplicity. The algorithm requires only solution of linear tridiagonal equations and scalar bubble point calculations at every time step. Replacing the improved Euler algorithm in the previous code by the Ballard-Brosilow algorithm and determining an adjustment method for the time step size, the resultant computer code presents a remarkable success: A typical numerical example simulating column dynamics from a steady state to another indicates that the calculational results can be obtained with engineering accuracy in about two orders of magnitude shorter computing time.