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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.
David T. Hobbs, David G. Karraker
Nuclear Technology | Volume 114 | Number 3 | June 1996 | Pages 318-324
Technical Paper | Enrichment and Reprocessing System | doi.org/10.13182/NT96-A35236
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The high-activity waste from Savannah River Site fuel reprocessing is stored as a two-layered mixture in mild steel tanks. The solid layer contains the hydrolyzable cations, including most of the actinides; the supernatant liquid is a strong base-salt solution that includes I37Cs. To gain storage capacity, the supernate is evaporated to solids, then redissolved for waste processing. The solubility of uranium and plutonium in the supernate is low, but evaporation raises the possibility of an accumulation in the evaporator. This study of uranium and plutonium solubility by statistical design experiments and under simulated evaporator conditions found that uranium solubility decreases to 5 to 10 ppm as the supernate is evaporated; plutonium solubility increases from 1 to ∼10 ppm. The possibility of uranium accumulation in an evaporator exists, but the possibility of plutonium accumulation appears to be small.
