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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.
Takanori Kameyama, Tetsuo Matsumura, Motoyasu Kinoshita
Nuclear Technology | Volume 106 | Number 3 | June 1994 | Pages 334-341
Technical Paper | Nuclear Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT94-A34963
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The peripheral region of a high burnup light water reactor (LWR) fuel pellet shows a microstructure that is different from the as-fabricated microstructure. The region where the microstructure change occurs (the rim region) is highly porous, and the original grains in the rim region are divided into much smaller subgrains. The electron probe microanalysis data of high burnup fuels indicate fission gas depletion in the rim region as well as in the central region. The burnup in the rim region is enhanced by built-up plutonium derived from a 238U self-shielding effect, which is called a rim effect. The rim effect accelerates microstructure change in the peripheral region. We developed a detailed burnup analysis code ANRB computing the rim effect in LWR fuels. We have verified the ANRB code performance with the data of the High Burnup Effects Program. The analysis shows that the microstructure change occurs where local burnup gets to the threshold burnup of 70 to 80 MWd/kg U in both pressurized water reactor and boiling water reactor types of fuels. The threshold burnup never changes with the plutonium/uranium burnup ratio or fission rate during the irradiation. The storage of radiation damage is expected to cause the microstructure change.
