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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.
George D. Cremeans, Richard F. Mahla
Nuclear Technology | Volume 87 | Number 4 | December 1989 | Pages 737-744
Technical Paper | TMI-2: Decontamination and Waste Management / Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT89-A27666
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The March 1979 accident at Three Mile Island Unit 2 released reactor coolant and core material particles to the reactor building basement and by various side streams to the auxiliary and fuel-handling building systems. Consequently, existing plant materials and incidental debris became radioactively contaminated from contact with the primary coolant discharge. Additionally, the makeup and purification (MUP) system demineralizer resins were degraded by exposure to thousands of curies of iodine and cesium trapped in the vessels. Area radiation levels, ranging from ten to thousands of roentgens per hour, prevented or severely restricted access to these areas and prohibited local decontamination methods. To decontaminate these areas, several alternative methods were evaluated, and one was selected as the most economically acceptable and plant-compatible method to remotely collect, process, and dispose of these radioactive materials and degraded resins. The decision was made to modify the two 14.38-kl (3800-gal) in-plant spent-resin storage tanks (SRSTs) to operate as particulate separators by a decantation process. The level of particulate concentration by this process was determined by the physical and radiochemical characteristics of the materials, relative to the subsequent requirements for solidification and disposal operations. Various modifications and features were added to each SRST to allow them to operate as clarifiers for concentrating sediments as well as resins. The sequence of operation is to pump a batch of solids entrained in water to a tank, allow it to settle, decant the supernatant, repeat this process until sufficient solids are collected, and then pump the solids to a solidification disposal container. The first two waste streams processed by the SRSTs were the containment basement sediment and contaminated resins from the cleanup demineralizers. A campaign is currently in progress to remove the contaminated resins from the MUP demineralizers.