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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.
Abd Y. Lafi, Jose N. Reyes, Jr.
Nuclear Technology | Volume 130 | Number 2 | May 2000 | Pages 177-183
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT00-A3085
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A comparison is presented between station blackout tests conducted in both the Advanced Plant Experiment (APEX) facility and in the modified Rig of Safety Assessment (ROSA/AP600) Large-Scale Test Facility. The comparison includes the depressurization and liquid-level behavior during secondary-side blowdown, natural circulation, automatic depressurization system operation, and in-containment refueling water storage tank injection. Reasonable agreement between the test results from APEX NRC-2 and ROSA/AP600 AP-BO-01 has been observed with respect to the timing of depressurization and liquid draining rates. This indicates that the reduced height and pressure scaling of APEX preserves the sequence of events relative to the full-height and pressure ROSA/AP600.
