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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.
Siegfried Jacobi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 91 | Number 2 | August 1990 | Pages 146-153
Technical Paper | Safety of Next Generation Power Reactor / Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT90-A34424
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Possible plutonium contamination of the primary loop and potential cooling disturbances, both due to cladding breaches, result in two areas that need to be considered: (a) the behavior of defective fuel subassemblies transferred to in-vessel storage and (b) the occurrence of new defects in the cladding tubes at the end of service life. A response to the resulting requirement of cladding tube monitoring during in-vessel storage is given, and the following solution is proposed: If fuel subassemblies are stored in in-vessel drums, the defect can be temporarily exposed by rotating the drum and exposing the subassemblies to different levels of residual neutron radiation intensity. Fission products escaping during this process are measured by delayed neutron monitors, as applied in normal operation.