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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.
Sümer Şahın
Nuclear Technology | Volume 92 | Number 1 | October 1990 | Pages 93-105
Technical Paper | Development of Nuclear Gas Cleaning and Filtering Techniques / Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT90-A34489
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A straightforward numerical-graphical method is applied to achieve a flat fission power density (FPD) in a catalyzed deuterium-deuterium fusion-driven hybrid blanket by using a mixed fuel made of a nuclear waste actinide (244CmCO2) and natural UO2 with variable fractions of fuel components in the radial direction. The FPD could be kept quasi-constant over a relatively long plant lifetime. The peak-to-average FPD increases from 1.071 at start-up to ∼ 1.074 after 18 months’ operation. The plant availability factor is 60% under a first-wall fusion neutron flux load of 1014 x 2.45- and 1014 x 14.1-MeV neutron/cm2.s, corresponding to ∼2.64 MW/m2. This eliminates the fuel management requirements for at least 18 months of plant operation. The investigated blanket breeds high-quality nuclear fuel (239Pu and 245Cm) and also produces electricity. The overall blanket multiplication factor M increases from 9.4 to only 9.8 in 18 months. This allows an optimal exploitation of the nonnuclear part of the power plant.
