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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.
Eckhard Krepper, Horst-Michael Prasser
Nuclear Technology | Volume 128 | Number 1 | October 1999 | Pages 75-86
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT99-A3015
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In 1995 at the integral test facility ISB-VVER in Elektrogorsk near Moscow, natural circulation experiments were performed that were scientifically supported by the Forschungszentrum Rossendorf. These experiments were the first of this kind at a test facility that models VVER-1000 thermal hydraulics. Using the code ATHLET, which is being developed by Gesellschaft für Anlagen- und Reaktorsicherheit, pre- and posttest calculations were done to determine the thermal-hydraulic events to be expected and to define and tune the boundary conditions of the test. The conditions found for natural circulation instabilities and cold-leg loop-seal clearing could be confirmed by the tests. The main thermal-hydraulic phenomena were identified and compared with the results gained during similar experiments on VVER-440 test facilities. Besides the thermal-hydraulic standard measuring system, the facility was equipped with needle-shaped conductivity probes for measuring the local void fractions.
