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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.
Ching-Hor Lee, Shi-Ping Teng
Nuclear Technology | Volume 101 | Number 1 | January 1993 | Pages 67-78
Technical Paper | Waste Management Special / Radioactive Waste Disposal | doi.org/10.13182/NT93-A34768
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An analytical solution covering the entire range of sorption properties of rock has been derived for the migration of radionuclides along a discrete fracture in a porous rock matrix. The analysis takes into account the advective transport in the fracture, longitudinal hydrodynamic dispersion in the fracture, molecular diffusion from the fracture into the rock matrix, adsorption within the matrix, and the radioactive decay. For adsorption of radionuclide within the matrix, the effects of no sorption, linear nonequilibrium sorption, and linear equilibrium sorption are integrated into a generic transient analytical solution. Based on certain assumptions, the problem can be formulated into two coupled one-dimensional transport equations: one for the fracture and another for the porous matrix in a direction perpendicular to the fracture axis. The general solution is of a single semi-infinite integral form that can be evaluated by Gaussian quadrature. The results indicate that the assumption of equilibrium sorption within the rock results in underestimation of the concentration profile along the fracture in the early stages of migration. It is worth noting that the concentration profile of the nonequilibrium sorption case is slightly smaller than that of the equilibrium sorption case after a certain time. However, the profiles eventually approach the same value. It is also confirmed that the porosity of rock strongly affects radionuclide transport in a fracture.
