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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.
Luigi Di Pace, Sandro Sandri
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 30 | Number 3 | December 1996 | Pages 1485-1489
Safety and Environment | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A11963159
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The study the present paper deals with has been developed in the framework of the Safety and Environmental Assessment of Fusion Power Long Term Programme (SEAL), continuing the past SEAFP study, promoted by the Commission of the European Union.
The aim of the present work is to analyse the corrosion induced by cooling water and the subsequent phenomena (dissolution of deposits, precipitation of soluble products, migration and deposition of activated particles along the cooling circuits) and to evaluate the activated corrosion product (ACP) distribution among the different regions of the cooling system. The ACP distribution will be used for the assessment of Occupational Radiation Exposure (ORE) that is involved in the working activities at the primary cooling system (PCS) of the SEAFP Alternative Plant Model (APM). ACPs could be a cause for concern in terms of occupational radiation exposure in maintenance scenarios, being responsible for about 90% of ORE in nuclear fission power plants. They could also be considerable for fusion devices in the case of severe accidents, such as ex-vessel LOCAs. The production due to neutron bombardment, corrosion/erosion, transport and deposition of the ACPs inside the PCS tubes and components have been estimated with the qualified and validated CEA code PACTOLE. It considers all the chemical and physical phenomena responsible for corrosion, activation and transport of corrosion products in cooling loops. The SEAFP-APM cooling system analysed has been a 1/8 cooling loop of the FW/Blanket. The thermofluidodynamic conditions inside the cooling loop, the water chemistry, the neutron fluxes and the operation scenario have been considered for the ACP assessment.
The results presented here are new and very significant because the ACP evaluation by PACTOLE carried out so far for the ITER project has been only referred to a pulsed fusion device, while the SEAFP reactor project considers steady state operation and a primary cooling system similar to a PWR one. The influence of the different design and operation parameters, like material selection, water chemistry etc., are discussed. The results obtained are extensively used to evaluate the occupational radiation exposure ORE. The related results are discussed and presented in another paper prepared by the same authors for this Topical Meeting.
