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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.
Y. S. Rana, Arun Singh, S. B. Degweker
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 174 | Number 3 | July 2013 | Pages 245-263
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE11-117
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Several low-power experiments have evaluated various methods, including those based on noise analysis, to measure the subcritical reactivity in accelerator-driven systems (ADSs). Similar experiments are planned at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). We have developed a new theory of reactor noise in ADSs taking into account the non-Poisson character of the source. One of the aims of the BARC experiments is to verify the theory and to interpret the results in terms of the new theory. As part of the experimental planning, a simulation of the kinds of results that might be expected with different counting and analyzing setups is necessary. We have developed an analog Monte Carlo code for carrying out these simulations. The simulator generates a detailed time history of counts in the detector so that any method of analysis can be carried out. Since analog Monte Carlo takes a very long computing time, instead of carrying out a simulation to yield results equivalent to transport theory, we attempt to reproduce results equivalent to few-group diffusion theory, which requires much less time. We discuss the basic theory of the simulation method and the results of our simulations on a simplified model of a proposed subcritical assembly.