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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
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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.
Kwang Soon Ha, Fan-Bill Cheung, Jinho Song, Rae Joon Park, Sang Baik Kim
Nuclear Technology | Volume 181 | Number 1 | January 2013 | Pages 196-207
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the 14th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics (NURETH-14) / Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A15767
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Boiling-induced natural-circulation flow in various engineered cooling channels is modeled and solved by considering the conservation of mass, momentum, and energy in the two-phase mixture, along with the two-phase friction drop and void fraction. The model is applied to estimate the induced mass flow rates through a uniform annular gap and a nonuniform annular gap between the reactor vessel and insulation under the in-vessel corium retention-external reactor vessel cooling conditions, and in the engineered corium cooling system of an ex-vessel core catcher during a severe accident. Dependence of the induced flow rate on various system parameters including the channel gap size, inlet diameter, inlet subcooling, and wall heat flux has been identified numerically. Results of the present study provide useful information for enhancing the design of engineered cooling channels to assure long-term cooling and retention of corium under severe accident conditions.