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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.
Chaung Lin
Nuclear Technology | Volume 92 | Number 1 | October 1990 | Pages 118-126
Technical Paper | Development of Nuclear Gas Cleaning and Filtering Techniques / Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT90-A34491
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A computer program that searches for control rod patterns has been developed. In the algorithm, the problem is decomposed into two levels. In the first level, according to an assumed average axial power distribution, a control rod pattern is determined that satisfies all constraints at each burnup step. In the second level, the conditions are checked at the end of the fuel cycle. If certain conditions are not satisfied, the average axial power distribution or the weighting factors are modified and the first-level search is repeated. The first-level search is formulated as an optimization problem with constraints. The constrained problem is converted to an equivalent unconstrained problem and a method similar to a penalty function method is then applied to obtain the control rod pattern. The program is demonstrated by successfully generating control rod programming for the Chinshan and Kuosheng nuclear power plants in Taiwan.
