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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.
Liang Shi, J. Michael Doster, Charles W. Mayo
Nuclear Technology | Volume 129 | Number 3 | March 2000 | Pages 338-355
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT00-A3066
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An experimental research program into the loose part damage process identified important mechanisms that govern accumulated loose part damage to steam generator tube sheets. Relationships were developed to quantify damage due to single and multiple impacts, including such effects as tube end open diameter reduction and tube end contour deformation. These experimental investigations have led to the development of a computational model for estimating loose part impact damage on steam generator tube ends. Comparisons to experimental data show the loose part damage model to be a good approximation of actual loose part impact damage and provide a convenient and quantitative linkage between loose part impact properties and damage. Impact damage effects are local effects that depend only on the single impacts and impact overlaps in a small region of interest. The damage can be directly related to local impact density. Since in general the local impact density on a steam generator tube sheet is unknown, a model developed to simulate loose part impact distributions as a function of operating conditions is described.