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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.
Young Min Kwon, Tae Sun Ro, Jin Ho Song
Nuclear Technology | Volume 112 | Number 2 | November 1995 | Pages 181-193
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A35172
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Ulchin 3 and 4 nuclear power plants, which are two-loop 2825 MW(thermal) pressurized water reactors designed by the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, adopted a safety depressurization system (SDS) to mitigate the beyond-design-basis event of a total loss of feedwater (TLOFW). A comparative simulation by the CEFLASH-4AS/REM and RELAP5/MOD3 computer codes for the TLOFW event without operator recovery and the TLOFW event with feed and bleed (F&B) operation is performed for Ulchin 3 and 4. In the analyses, the SDS bleed paths are modeled by orifices located on the top of the pressurizer, where the analytical area of the bleed path is based on the Ulchin 3 and 4 SDS design flow capacity. An additional case, where the SDS piping and valves are modeled explicitly, is considered for the RELAP5 analysis. The predictions by the CEFLASH-4AS/REM of the transient two-phase system behavior show good qualitative and quantitative agreement with those by the RELAP5 simulation. The RELAP5 case with explicit piping results in less repressurization and lower reactor coolant system pressure than that of the case without explicit SDS modeling. However, the two cases of RELAP5 analyses result in essentially the same transient scenarios for TLOFW with F&B operation. The results of the simulation demonstrate the validity of the Ulchin 3 and 4 design approach, which employs CEFLASH-4AS/REM computer code and SDS bleed paths modeled by orifices located on the top of the pressurizer. The results also indicate that the decay heat removal and core inventory makeup function can be successfully accomplished by F&B operation by using the SDS for Ulchin 3 and 4.