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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.
Yoshinori Nakahara, Kenya Suyama, Jun Inagawa, Ryuji Nagaishi, Setsumi Kurosawa, Nobuaki Kohno, Mamoru Onuki, Hiroki Mochizuki
Nuclear Technology | Volume 137 | Number 2 | February 2002 | Pages 111-126
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT02-2
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To establish a nuclide composition benchmark data set for the verification of burnup codes, destructive analyses of light water reactor spent-fuel samples, which were cut out from several heights of spent-fuel rods, were carried out at the analytical laboratory at the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute. The 16 samples from three kinds of pressurized water reactor (PWR) fuel rods and the 18 samples from two boiling water reactor (BWR) fuel rods were examined. Their initial 235U enrichments and burnups were from 2.6 to 4.1% and from 4 to 50 GWd/t, respectively. One PWR fuel rod and one BWR fuel rod contained gadolinia as a burnable poison. The measurements for more than 40 nuclides of uranium, transuranium, and fission product elements were performed by destructive analysis using mass spectrometry, and alpha-ray and gamma-ray spectrometry. Burnup for each sample was determined by the 148Nd method. The analytical methods and the results as well as the related irradiation condition data are compiled as a complete benchmark data set.
