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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.
Michael Philip Short, Ronald George Ballinger
Nuclear Technology | Volume 177 | Number 3 | March 2012 | Pages 366-381
Technical Paper | Nuclear Plant Operations and Control | doi.org/10.13182/NT12-A13481
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A material system that resists lead-bismuth attack and retains its strength at very high temperatures has been developed that enables increased outlet temperature and the promise of allowing increased coolant velocity and efficiency of lead- and lead-bismuth-cooled reactors if the behavior reported here is confirmed by long-term tests. The development of this system represents an enabling technology for lead-bismuth-cooled reactors. The system is a functionally graded composite (FGC), with separate layers engineered to perform corrosion resistance and structural functions. Alloy F91 was chosen as the structural layer of the composite because of its strength and radiation resistance. An Fe-12Cr-2Si alloy was developed based on previous work in the Fe-Cr-Si system, and was used as the corrosion-resistant cladding layer because of its chemical similarity to F91 and its superior corrosion resistance in lead and lead-bismuth in both oxidizing and reducing environments. The availability of the FGC will have significant impacts on lead-bismuth reactor design. The allowable increases in outlet temperature and coolant velocity lead to a large increase in power density - either to a smaller core for the same power rating or to more power output for the same-size core. In this paper, we report on the overall design of the FGC. We also discuss the general implications for lead-bismuth-cooled reactor design. In a future paper, we will discuss the fabrication and the initial evaluation of the actual product produced using commercial processing methods.
