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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.
Constantinos Syros,* Claudio Ronchi, Cinzia Spanó
Nuclear Technology | Volume 94 | Number 2 | May 1991 | Pages 213-227
Technical Paper | Advances in Reactor Accident Consequence Assessment / Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT91-A34543
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A semianalytical nonlinear model is described for the calculation of the burst release and release rate of volatile fission product (VFP) from a fuel pellet under steady-state and transient reactor conditions as well as the radial density distribution in the open porosity. The density of the VFP in the porosity channels is assumed to be c(r, t) = φ(r)exp[—LT(r)ω(t)] + Λ-1(t), where L is an analytical function of parameters characterizing the physics and the geometry of the pellet; φ(r) rigorously satisfies the required boundary conditions; and ω(t), the solution of a highly nonlinear differential equation, is a time function (“kinetic time”) that represents the evolution of the density profile. The constant Λ is suitably calculated with the zeroes of the Bessel function Jo(x). The density c(r, t) of the VFP in the open porosity of the pellet is used to find the pressure p(r, t) in the open pores. The integration procedure of the transport equation for different initial and boundary conditions is described. Calculation experiments are presented and discussed.