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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.
Byung-Ho Lee, Yang-Hyun Koo, Dong-Seong Sohn
Nuclear Technology | Volume 127 | Number 2 | August 1999 | Pages 151-159
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT99-A2991
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A model for rim porosity that takes into account the effect of overpressurization on rim pores is proposed for high-burnup UO2 fuel. It is based on the assumption that all the fission gases produced are retained in rim pores, and the threshold pellet average burnup required for the formation of the rim region is 40 MWd/kg U. In addition, a thermal conductivity correlation is proposed that uses the rim porosity model developed. This correlation for the rim region considers both degradation of thermal conductivity with burnup across the fuel pellet and additional degradation at the pellet rim due to very high porosity. To calculate the temperature profile across the fuel pellet where the rim region is formed, the present correlation for the rim region is combined with the HALDEN, MATPRO, and SIMFUEL correlations for thermal conductivity for the fuel interior region where the rim feature does not exist. Application of the present correlation to the measured HALDEN fuel centerline temperature (Nuclear Energy Agency public database IFA-562) shows that good agreement between the calculated and measured fuel centerline temperature is obtained when the present correlation is combined with HALDEN thermal conductivity. On the other hand, when it is combined with SIMFUEL thermal conductivity, which does not consider the effect on thermal conductivity of fission gases and other volatile fission products, lower centerline temperature is obtained due to the characteristics of the SIMFUEL.
