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The Young Members Group works to encourage and enable all young professional members to be actively involved in the efforts and endeavors of the Society at all levels (Professional Divisions, ANS Governance, Local Sections, etc.) as they transition from the role of a student to the role of a professional. It sponsors non-technical workshops and meetings that provide professional development and networking opportunities for young professionals, collaborates with other Divisions and Groups in developing technical and non-technical content for topical and national meetings, encourages its members to participate in the activities of the Groups and Divisions that are closely related to their professional interests as well as in their local sections, introduces young members to the rules and governance structure of the Society, and nominates young professionals for awards and leadership opportunities available to members.
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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.
Richard Storck, Dieter Buhmann
Nuclear Technology | Volume 121 | Number 2 | February 1998 | Pages 212-220
Technical Paper | German Direct Disposal Project | doi.org/10.13182/NT98-A2833
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Differences in technical concepts for direct disposal of spent fuel and for disposal of high-level waste (HLW) from reprocessing are discussed. The preferred emplacement sites for spent-fuel elements are drifts instead of boreholes, which are used for vitrified HLW. The nuclide inventories of uranium and plutonium are considerably higher with direct disposal. The impact of these conceptual differences on the long-term safety of a repository in a salt formation is investigated.The deterministically calculated radiation exposures for direct disposal and for disposal of reprocessed waste are both within the limits of the German licensing criterion. Furthermore, the differences in the radiation exposures are low, so from this point of view, neither concept is preferable. This result is surprising because the higher inventories of uranium and plutonium in the concept of direct disposal have a negligible influence on radiation exposure. It is shown that the layout temperature of a repository is a parameter influencing long-term safety, where higher layout temperatures are favorable.
