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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.
Shinya Miyahara, Kazuo Haga, Yoshiaki Himeno
Nuclear Technology | Volume 97 | Number 2 | February 1992 | Pages 212-226
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT92-A34617
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A series of tests is conducted to study the mechanical release behavior of sodium aerosols containing nonvolatile fission products during a sodium-concrete reaction in which release behavior due to hydrodynamic breakup of the hydrogen bubble is predominant at the sodium pool surface. In the tests, nonradioactive materials, namely, strontium oxide, europium oxide, and ruthenium particles, whose sizes range from a few microns to several tens of microns, are used as nonvolatile fission product simulants. The following results are obtained: 1. The sodium aerosol release rate during the sodium-concrete reaction is larger than that of natural evaporation. The difference, however, becomes smaller with increasing sodium temperature: nearly ten times smaller at 400°C and three times at 700°C. 2. The retention factors for the nonvolatile materials in the sodium pool increase to the range of 0.5 to 104 with an increase in the sodium temperature from 400 to 700° C.
