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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.
Tsuguyuki Kobayashi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 177 | Number 2 | February 2012 | Pages 231-244
Technical Paper | Reprocessing | doi.org/10.13182/NT12-A13368
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A simple procedure to simulate the important kinetic features of counter-current processes in pulsed columns has been developed. The overall mass transfer coefficient was simplified to be constant along the column, and the stripping of Pu4+ by hydroxylamine is assumed to be instantaneous to avoid complex reaction rate calculations. The number of calculation cells can be determined by making calculations with an increasing number of cells until its influence becomes small enough. The validity of these simplifications was confirmed by comparing the calculation results with a wide range of measured data from extraction and stripping as well as Pu partition tests with laboratory, engineering, and pilot scale columns. This procedure is intended for use in a conceptual design study of a future fast breeder reactor (FBR) reprocessing plant. An example of its application in a flow sheet calculation was demonstrated, where a coextraction process of U and Pu was simulated to find the conditions to obtain a solution with Pu/(U + Pu) ratio being 30% from a typical feed of FBR spent fuel solution.
