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Latest News
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.
S. Smolentsev, T. Rhodes, Y. Yan, A. Tassone, C. Mistrangelo, L. Bühler, F. R. Urgorri
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 5 | July 2020 | Pages 653-669
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1751378
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In “An Approach to Verification and Validation of MHD Codes for Fusion Applications” [S. Smolentsev et al., Fusion Eng. Des., Vol. 100, p. 65 (2015)], an effort for verification and validation of computer codes for liquid metal flows in a magnetic field for fusion cooling/breeding applications was initiated. The current study continues that effort. A group of experts in computational magnetohydrodynamics from several institutions in the United States and Europe performed a code-to-code comparison for the selected reference case of a mixed-convection buoyancy-opposed magnetohydrodynamic flow of eutectic lead-lithium (PbLi) alloy in a thin-wall conducting square duct at Hartmann number Ha = 220, Reynolds number Re = 3040, and Grashof number Gr = 2.88 × 107. As shown, the reference flow demonstrates a boundary layer separation in the heated region and formation of a reversed flow zone. The results of the comparison suggest that all five solvers predict well the key flow features but have moderate quantitative differences, in particular, in the location of the separation point. Also, two of the codes are more computationally dissipative, showing no velocity and temperature oscillations.
