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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.
Diethelm Schroeder-Richter, Sabiha Yildiz
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 29 | Number 4 | July 1996 | Pages 512-518
Technical Paper | Blanket Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A30694
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The critical heat flux (CHF) is studied experimentally in vertical tubes heated directly using power current (direct current 2500 A, 15 V) and cooled with water at a low mass flow rate (0 to 0 2 Mg/m2·s) and at low pressure (0.1 to 0.8 MPa). A smooth tube and a tube with a porous coating layer sintered onto the inner surface were used. The tube and the porous coating layer are both made from INCONEL-600. The results (so far at moderate heat fluxes) are compared with each other and with correlations by Katto and by Weber. Enhancement of heat transfer was determined as well as a negative effect of the porous coating below the expected value of CHF. It seems that a disadvantage of the coated tube corresponds to the apparently annular flow regime alone; whereas, the CHFs can be enhanced by the porous layer as long as the bubbly flow pattern is maintained up to the location of maximum heat flux. Obviously, the latter situation is established during high-heat-flux conditions, i.e., at high subcooling and high flow rate, which are the classical design characteristics of high-heat-flux components infusion reactors.
