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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.
Hashem M. Hashemian, Wendell C. Bean
Nuclear Technology | Volume 176 | Number 3 | December 2011 | Pages 414-429
Technical Paper | Nuclear Plant Operations and Control | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A13317
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Cable condition monitoring involves a variety of testing or monitoring methods, none without limitations. Mechanical and chemical tests are only local in their effectiveness; they can miss problems in the untested cable. Electrical-cable-condition-monitoring tests - including insulation resistance tests, impedance measurements (such as the LCR test), and reflectometry or "cable radar" methods - make it possible to test entire cable circuits while they remain in operation. Impedance measurements enable the evaluation of cable condition factors such as dielectric absorption ratio, polarization index, quality factor, and dissipation factor. Several new electrical measurement methods, including time or frequency domain reflectometry, and a wireless microsensor technology called AgeAlert™, are showing promise as techniques for in situ monitoring of the nuclear power plant cable condition. The integration of all these methods and their combination with end-device testing methods represent a new application of cable condition monitoring that promises to provide the correlation between aging test results and the aging condition of in situ cables that individual methods by themselves do not provide.
