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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.
Hitoshi Uematsu, Sadayuki Izutsu, Toru Yamamoto, Ryutaro Yamashita, Sakae Muto, Akio Toba
Nuclear Technology | Volume 88 | Number 1 | October 1989 | Pages 87-97
Technical Paper | Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT89-A34339
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A reactivity-initiated event is a design-basis accident for the safety analysis of boiling water reactors. It is defined as a rapid transient of reactor power caused by a reactivity insertion of over $1.0 due to a postulated drop or abnormal withdrawal of the control rod from the core. Strong space-dependent feedback effects are associated with the local power increase due to control rod movement. A realistic treatment of the core status in a transient by a code with a detailed core model is recommended in evaluating this event. A three-dimensional transient code, ARIES, has been developed to meet this need. The code simulates the event with three-dimensional neutronics, coupled with multichannel thermal hydraulics, based on a nonequilibrium separated flow model. The models and verification of the code with a benchmark problem posed by the Nuclear Energy Agency Committee on Research Physics/Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations and by comparisons to the experimental data of tests with the SPERT III E-core are presented.
