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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.
D. Pun-Quach, P. Sermer, F. M. Hoppe, O. Nainer, B. Phan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 181 | Number 1 | January 2013 | Pages 170-183
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the 14th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics (NURETH-14) / Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A15765
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents a best estimate plus uncertainty (BEPU) methodology applied to dryout, or critical channel power (CCP), modeling based on a Monte Carlo approach. This method involves the identification of the sources of uncertainty and the development of error models for the characterization and separation of epistemic and aleatory uncertainties associated with the CCP parameter. Furthermore, the proposed method facilitates the use of actual operational data leading to improvements over traditional methods, such as sensitivity analysis, which assume parametric models that may not accurately capture the possible complex statistical structures in the system input and responses.