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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.
G. Gündüz, İ. Uslu, I. Önal, H. H. Durmazuçar, T. Öztürk, A. A. Akşit, B. Kopuz, F. Can, Ş. Can, R. Uzmen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 111 | Number 1 | July 1995 | Pages 63-69
Technical Paper | Nuclear Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A35144
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Uranium dioxide-gadolinium oxide fuel was produced by the sol-gel technique. The effects of different parameters such as calcination and reduction temperature, compaction pressure, particle size of powder, type of binder, sintering temperature, sintering atmosphere, and duration of sintering on pore size distribution were investigated. The experiments were carried out on three different fuels, (a) pure urania, (b) uraniagadolinia (10%), and (c) urania-gadolinia (10%)-titania (0.1%) doped fuel. It was observed that compaction pressure as low as 200 MPa is sufficient to obtain highdensity pellets, while the use of binder or grinding the powder below 400 mesh does not affect densities. Reduction of powder at 1000 K always gives lower density fuels than the powder reduced at 873 K. Sintering at high temperature and the use of a wet atmosphere each independently increases the fuel density.