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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.
Jacques Duco, Maria Trotabas
Nuclear Technology | Volume 87 | Number 1 | August 1989 | Pages 104-119
Technical Paper | TMI-2: Materials Behavior / Nuclear Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT89-A27641
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the framework of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development/Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations Task Group on Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2), the Commissariat ??? I’Energie Atomique examined five samples retrieved from the damaged reactor core: a slightly damaged fuel rod chunk from assembly L1 of the core external row, a rod remnant in position C7 hanging from the assembly head, and three core bore rocks from both the ceramic and agglomerate regions of the damaged core. The analyses include visual observation, immersion density, metallography, wavelength dispersive X-ray analysis, X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetry, gamma spectroscopy, and neutron activation analysis. The information gained provides assessments of the maximum local temperatures reached during the accident, an insight into a possible fuel degradation mechanism for the rod in position C7, and information on fission product and control or structural material behavior. Such data, involving a small number of samples, will be added to those from other contributing laboratories to obtain an extensive data base, to try to understand the TMI-2 accident, and, presumably, to avoid the recurrence of a core melt on the basis of lessons to be learned.