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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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.
John F. Palsmeier, Sudarshan K. Loyalka
Nuclear Technology | Volume 184 | Number 1 | October 2013 | Pages 78-95
Technical Paper | Source Term Assessment | doi.org/10.13182/NT184-78
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The role of charge on aerosol evolution and hence the nuclear source term has been an issue of interest, and there is a need for both measurements and modeling for quantifying this role. We focus here on simulations of charged-aerosol evolution considering coagulation alone. We have used the direct simulation Monte Carlo technique and benchmarked it by comparing the results for monodisperse aerosols as obtained by deterministic techniques where the particles are charged but are assumed to remain monodisperse even after coagulation. We then further explore simulations of polydisperse and charged aerosols and compare the results with those obtained when the charge effects are ignored. We find that charge effects can be significant.
