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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.
Gabor Nagy, Péter Tilky, Ákos Horváth, Tamás Pintér, Robert Schiller
Nuclear Technology | Volume 136 | Number 3 | December 2001 | Pages 331-341
Technical Paper | Nuclear Plant Operations and Control | doi.org/10.13182/NT01-A3249
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The results of chemical and radiochemical analyses of the primary circuit coolant liquid, obtained between 1995 and 1999 at the four VVER-type blocks of the Paks (Hungary) nuclear power station, are assessed. A model has been developed regarding the pressure vessel with its auxiliary parts plus the fuel elements as the zone, with the six steam generators as one single unit. The stream from the steam generator is split, with its larger part returning to the zone through the main circulating pump and the smaller one passing through the purifier column. Based on this flowchart, the formation kinetics of corrosion products and of radioactive substances are evaluated. Correlation analysis is applied to reveal any eventual interdependence of the processes, whereas the range-per-scatter (R/S) method is used to characterize the random or deterministic nature of a process. The evaluation of the t → limits of the kinetic equations enables one to conclude that (a) the total amount of corrosion products per element during one cycle is almost always <15 kg and (b) the zone acts as a highly efficient filter with an efficiency of ~1. The R/S results show that the fluctuations in the concentrations of the corrosion products are persistent; this finding indicates that random effects play here little if any role and that the processes in the coolant are under control. Correlation analyses show that the variations of the concentrations are practically uncorrelated and that the processes are independent of each other.