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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.
Chun-Chang Chao, Chin-Jang Chang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 130 | Number 1 | April 2000 | Pages 27-38
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT00-A3075
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The DPRA-SGTR computer program was written to develop a dynamic event tree for the analysis of a steam generator (SG) tube rupture (SGTR) event. Using the dynamic event tree, a full-scope understanding of the possible responses of a plant following an SGTR event and the related actions with the emergency operating procedures (EOPs) can be analyzed. RELAP5/MOD3.2 was linked to DPRA-SGTR to calculate the thermal-hydraulic response of a Westinghouse three-loop pressurized water reactor at the Maanshan nuclear power plant. One SG tube with a double-ended break was postulated at the beginning of the accident. The plant thermal-hydraulic behaviors, status of the mitigation systems, and operator actions following the EOPs were explicitly modeled in the postulated SGTR. A total of 131 sequences were generated after an SGTR event. Among the 131 sequences, 91 sequences with a frequency sum of 8.5 × 10-6 were stopped either because of low-occurrence frequency (<1 × 10-12) or because the preset mission time was reached (30 000 s after initiating the event). Seven out of the 91 sequences with a frequency sum of 6 × 10-9 were intentionally stopped as a fatal error occurred when RELAP5 was calculating the thermal-hydraulic response.
