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ANS Student Conference 2025
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.
Francesc Reventós, José Sánchez-Baptista, Alberto Pérez Navas, Pablo Moreno
Nuclear Technology | Volume 90 | Number 3 | June 1990 | Pages 294-307
Technical Paper | RELAP/MOD2 / Nuclear Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT90-A34395
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The thermal-hydraulic analysis group at Asociación Nuclear Ascó has prepared a model of the plant using RELAP5/MOD2. Protection and control sys-tems have been added as well as a kinetic model in order to accurately analyze plant transients. A new system to record process information collected by plant instrumentation is being installed and will provide a more accurate follow-up of operational and incidental transients of the plant. The current recording system provides adequate information in terms of safety and operation, but there are some interpretation problems when it is used to validate a thermal-hydraulic model. Under these conditions, the selection of transients to assess has been the most important step on qualifying the model. Once a steady-state calculation is achieved, six actual transients are selected to validate the model. From this analysis, it is concluded that the level of qualification of the model is sufficient to validate the predictions of the behavior of the plant under such situations. This process will continue for other transients to broaden the capabilities of the model.
