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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.
Bernd Grambow, Andreas Loida, Emmanuel Smailos
Nuclear Technology | Volume 121 | Number 2 | February 1998 | Pages 174-188
Technical Paper | German Direct Disposal Project | doi.org/10.13182/NT98-A2830
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The results are summarized of 15 yr of German research on spent fuel with respect to its suitability as a waste form disposed of in a repository located in the Gorleben salt dome. Within the multibarrier system for long-term isolation of high-level waste (HLW), the innermost engineered barrier "canistered spent fuel" contributes essentially to isolating radionuclides from the biosphere if a salt brine were to come into contact with the waste form. A large fraction of the radionuclide contents of the reacted fuel mass would become reimmobilized within secondary alteration products and on container corrosion products, but inevitably a certain nuclide-specific fraction would be released into the aqueous geochemical environment. The corrosion resistance of the fuel and the radionuclide mobility are not inherent materials properties but also depend on geological disposal conditions, packing concepts, and radioactive decay. In particular, the availability of oxidants is critical, controlling spent-fuel alteration rates and alteration products as well as radionuclide solubilities. Spent fuel is at least as suitable for final disposal as is HLW glass.
