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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.
Byoung-Uhn Bae, Seok Kim, Yu-Sun Park, Kyoung-Ho Kang, Byong-Jo Yun
Nuclear Technology | Volume 181 | Number 3 | March 2013 | Pages 479-492
Technical Papers | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT181-479
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The passive auxiliary feedwater system (PAFS) is one of the advanced safety features adopted in the Advanced Power Reactor Plus (APR+) and is designed to completely replace a conventional, active auxiliary feedwater system. With the aim of validating the cooling and operational performance of the PAFS, a separate effect test facility, the PAFS Condensing heat removal Assessment Loop (PASCAL), was constructed by simulating a single passive condensation heat exchanger (PCHX) tube submerged in the passive condensation cooling tank (PCCT) according to the volumetric scaling methodology. During heat removal of the PAFS, the pool water in the PCCT plays a role in the ultimate heat sink of a decay heat. In this study, the effect of the PCCT water level on the cooling performance of the PAFS was experimentally investigated with the PASCAL facility. Quasi-steady-state and PCCT level decrease test cases were sequentially performed by varying the steam generator heater power from 300 to 750 kW to investigate the thermal-hydraulic behavior during the decrease of the PCCT water level. From the experimental results, it was found that the decrease of the PCCT water level enhanced evaporative heat transfer at the outer wall of the PCHX tube by reducing the degree of subcooling around the PCHX. That induced an increase of the heat removal rate by the PCHX during the transient. Thus, it can be concluded that the current design of the PCHX in the PAFS has sufficient capacity to cool down the decay heat during the whole transient of the PCCT water level decrease.