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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.
Shaw H. Bian, Dale E. Bush, Yat Yan Yung, Craig E. Peterson
Nuclear Technology | Volume 122 | Number 2 | May 1998 | Pages 158-169
Technical Paper | RETRAN | doi.org/10.13182/NT98-A2859
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A limiting transient under single-loop operation (SLO) conditions was analyzed to establish the analytical capability to support SLO for Washington Public Power Supply System's WNP-2.In the WNP-2 RETRAN model, each of the two recirculation loops is simulated separately. Under the SLO condition, the unaffected loop provides ~50% core flow with a power of ~72%.Two steady-state cases were run using actual plant data under single-loop conditions to show that the model initializes correctly. The plant data were collected from the cycle 2 SLO. An additional benchmark was performed using the single-recirculation-pump test data collected during the power ascension test in the initial startup phase of WNP-2. The calculated reverse flow of the idle loop compared well with the measured data from the single recirculation pump trip test.After the benchmarking, a limiting transient, i.e., generator load rejection without bypass, was analyzed for cycle 8. The resulting power, flow, and pressure histories were compared with the fuel supplier's results. The Supply System results for the limiting transient showed reasonably good comparison with the fuel supplier's results, with the Supply System model yielding more conservative results. In addition, hot-channel analyses indicate that the SLO thermal limits are bounded by those from the two-loop operations.