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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.
Masayoshi Ishida, Takanari Ogata, Motoyasu Kinoshita
Nuclear Technology | Volume 104 | Number 1 | October 1993 | Pages 37-51
Technical Paper | Nuclear Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT93-A34868
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A model for constituent migration behavior in U-Pu-Zr metallic fast reactor fuel is proposed. It is based on diffusion equations for the ternary system under a radial temperature gradient, and it takes into account the alloy phase decomposition, assuming a quasi-binary U-Zr phase diagram with a constant plutonium content. Parametric simulations of Experimental Breeder Reactor II irradiation data with appropriate transport properties of the alloy system showed that the model can predict the experimentally observed radial three-zone structure and zirconium and uranium redistribution, although the predicted radial location of zirconium-depleted middle zone disagreed with the experimental result. Accumulation of basic experimental data on transport properties and a ternary phase diagram of the system are needed for a better understanding of the behavior.