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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
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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.
Kiyomi Funabashi, Koichi Chino, Tsutomu Baba, Hiroyuki Tsuchiya, Tatsuo Izumida, Toshio Sawa
Nuclear Technology | Volume 108 | Number 3 | December 1994 | Pages 370-378
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT94-A35019
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A demister using a hydrophobic porous membrane made from polytetrafluoroethylene was developed to improve the decontamination factor (DF) of a waste evaporator. The demister removes the radioactive mist in steam generated from the evaporator. A large-scale membrane module (membrane surface area: 3 m1) for the demister was newly designed, and its steam permeation rate and DF were experimentally examined using steam containing simulated mist (5 wt% Na2SO4 solution). The steam permeation rate decreases due to adhesion of removed mist on the membrane surface, but it is maintained at ∼0.35 of the initial value through falling of the mist from the membrane surface due to the mist particles’ own weight. The DF of the demister, using a membrane having less than a 0.7-μm pore diameter, is >5 × 103. The total DF of the evaporator with the new demister is estimated to be >5 × 107.
