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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.
W. S. Yeung, Jen Wu, R. T. Fernandez, R. K. Sundaram
Nuclear Technology | Volume 101 | Number 2 | February 1993 | Pages 244-251
Technical Note | Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT93-A34786
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The results of the transient behavior of the water cannon phenomenon determined by RELAP5/MOD3 Version 5m5 are presented. The physical system consists of a 0.7112-m-long, 0.0381-m-i.d. vertical tube partially immersed in a reservoir of subcooled water. The tube is closed at the top and initially filled with saturated steam. The water cannon is created when a liquid slug is drawn into the tube because of the rapid condensation of the steam. In a fraction of a second, the liquid slug strikes the top end of the tube and causes a large pressure spike. The primary objective is to apply the RELAP5/MOD3 computer code to analyze the water cannon event and assess the ability of RELAP5/MOD3 to simulate fast two-phase transients. The sensitivity of time-step size and mesh size has been studied. It is found that RELAP5/MOD3 adequately simulated the transient process with a mesh size of 0.07112 m (i.e., ten nodes) and a time-step size of 10−5 s. The calculated peak pressure of the first pressure spike is of the same order of magnitude as experimental data from literature. The effect of reservoir temperature on the magnitude of the first pressure spike is also studied, and it is found that the pressure peak value decreased with increasing reservoir temperature.