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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.
Jorge Solís, Maria N. Avramova, Kostadin N. Ivanov
Nuclear Technology | Volume 146 | Number 3 | June 2004 | Pages 267-278
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT04-A3505
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A multilevel methodology has been developed to extend the TRAC-BF1/NEM coupled code capability to obtain the transient fuel rod response. The COBRA-TF thermal-hydraulics subchannel analysis code is coupled to TRAC-BF1/NEM in the parallel virtual machine environment. The power information obtained from the nodal expansion method three-dimensional neutronic calculation is used by the hot subchannel analysis module. The TRAC-BF1 thermal-hydraulic system analysis code provides the COBRA-TF thermal-hydraulic boundary conditions. The subchannel analysis module uses this information to recalculate the fluid, thermal, and hydraulics conditions in the most limiting node (axial region of assembly/channel) within the core at each time step. A dynamic algorithm has been developed to identify the most limiting channel and fuel assembly (radially) and axial region (node) based on the current state of the core. Results, obtained with the new parallel multilevel coupled methodology, are presented and discussed for the Mexican Laguna Verde 1 nuclear power plant control rod drop accident.
