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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.
Steven J. Piet, Brent W. Dixon, Jacob J. Jacobson, Gretchen E. Matthern, David E. Shropshire
Nuclear Technology | Volume 173 | Number 3 | March 2011 | Pages 227-238
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycles and Their Characteristics | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A11658
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nothing in life is static, so why compare fuel cycle options using only static, equilibrium analyses? Competitive industry looks at how new technology options might displace existing technologies and change how existing systems work. So too, our years of performing dynamic simulations of advanced nuclear fuel cycle options provide insights into how they might work and how one might transition from the current once-through fuel cycle. This paper summarizes those insights within the context of the 2005 objectives and goals of what was then the U.S. Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI). The intent here is not to compare options, assess options versus those objectives and goals, nor recommend changes to those objectives and goals. (The specific options change over time; the objective in this paper is to look for more generic insights.) We organize what we have learned from dynamic simulations in the context of the AFCI objectives for waste management, proliferation resistance, uranium utilization, and economics. Thus, we do not merely describe "lessons learned" from dynamic simulations but attempt to answer the "so what" question by using this context; i.e., how do the lessons learned matter relative to goals and objectives not just to technological observations? The analyses have been performed using the Verifiable Fuel Cycle Simulation of Nuclear Fuel Cycle Dynamics (VISION). We observe that the 2005 objectives and goals do not address many of the inherently dynamic discriminators among advanced fuel cycle options and transitions thereof.