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April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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.
Mukesh Tayal, Lorne D. Macdonald, Erl Kohn, Walter P. Dovigo
Nuclear Technology | Volume 85 | Number 3 | June 1989 | Pages 300-313
Technical Paper | Nuclear Fuel | doi.org/10.13182/NT89-A34252
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The GASOUT computer code calculates fission gas release, activity release, and fission product swelling in a Canada deuterium uranium (CANDU) fuel element during transient (nonequilibrium) conditions such as load following, postulated accidents involving high temperatures, and temporary postdryout operation of fuel. The phenomena modeled in the code include production of isotopes; diffusion; grain growth, both equiaxed and columnar; sweeping by grain boundaries; growth of grain-boundary bubbles; interlinkage of bubbles; grain-face separation; release by melting; radioactive decay; and effect of precursors. These phenomena are described in the code by rate equations, which are integrated numerically within the code. Therefore, the model is dynamic and provides results during short-term transients (few seconds to few days) as well as at the end of long irradiations (few years). This one-dimensional code was developed for accident conditions that lead to high fuel temperature, but it is also applicable to normal operating conditions. The activity calculations account for contributions from both volatile and nonvolatile fission products. They also account for radioactive decay during all the above processes and for the effect of precursors. The predictions of GASOUT were found to be in reasonable agreement with the steady-state predictions (for stable gas) of the NOTPAT code on which it is based. Furthermore, agreement was also reasonable to exact solutions from the Booth diffusion model, to data from the CONTACT-1 series of experiments and from the direct electric heating experiments, and to American Nuclear Society Standard 5.4.