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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.
Shigeaki Nakagawa, Kazuhiko Kunitomi, Kazuhiro Sawa
Nuclear Technology | Volume 115 | Number 3 | September 1996 | Pages 266-280
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT96-A15837
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (MHTGR) is expected to be one of the best energy sources in the near future because it can supply high-temperature heat and have high thermal efficiency and sufficient safety features. The safety evaluation of the future MHTGR should be performed based on the experience obtained from the safety evaluation of the High-Temperature Engineering Test Reactor (HTTR). The safety evaluation of the HTTR was performed considering the specific safety design features of the HTGR and is applicable to the future MHTGR. Before the detailed safety evaluation of the future MHTGR, the safety evaluation method and results of the HTTR should be reviewed, and newly established acceptance criteria and methods for selecting evaluation events must be clarified. This paper describes in detail the method and results of the safety evaluation of the HTTR.