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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.
Sylvie Aubry, Christian Caremoli, Jean Olive, Paul Rascle
Nuclear Technology | Volume 112 | Number 3 | December 1995 | Pages 331-345
Technical Paper | Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A35159
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Pressurized water reactor (PWR) or liquid-metal fast breeder reactor cores or fuel assemblies, PWR steam generators, condensers, and tubular heat exchangers are basic components of a nuclear power plant that involve two-phase flows in tube or rod bundles. A deep knowledge of the detailed flow patterns on the shell side is necessary to evaluate departure from nucleate boiling (DNB) margins in reactor cores, singularity effects (grids, wire spacers, support plates, and baffles), corrosion on the steam generator tube sheet, bypass effects, and vibration risks. For that purpose, Electricité de France has developed since 1986 a general purpose Thermal-HYdraulic Code (THYC) to study three-dimensional single- and two-phase flows in rod or tube bundles (PWR cores, steam generators, condensers, and heat exchangers). It considers the three-dimensional domain to contain two kinds of components: fluid and solids. The THYC model is obtained by space-time averaging of the instantaneous equations (mass, momentum, and energy) of each phase over control volumes including fluid and solids. The physical model of THYC is validated under several French and international experiments for single- and two-phase flows. The THYC is used for the calculation of transients such as steam-line break (coupled with a three-dimensional neutronics code), for DNB predictions, and for various steam generator or condenser studies.