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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.
Josef Butsch, Franz-Hermann Schlüter, Josef Eibl
Nuclear Technology | Volume 111 | Number 3 | September 1995 | Pages 426-436
Technical Paper | A New Light Water Reactor Safety Concept Special / Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A15871
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A feasibility study has been performed for a light water reactor containment able to resist even severe accidents by passive means. Upper-bound design loads have been considered for all physically possible scenarios after a core-melt accident as determined by Kernforschungszentrum Karlsruhe. The essential layout of this containment is presented. Based on the main system features of a German 1300-MW Convoy reactor type, internal static pressure, hydrogen detonation, failure of the pressure vessel under high pressure, and steam explosion, respectively, have been regarded as well as such external loads as an airplane crash, earthquake, gas explosion, and so forth. The containment can remove the decay heat by purely passive means, and it is believed that the design can be realized at reasonable costs.
