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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.
Leo K. Sepold, Alexei Miassoedov, Gerhard Schanz, Ulrike Stegmaier, Martin Steinbrück, Juri Stuckert, Christoph Homann
Nuclear Technology | Volume 147 | Number 2 | August 2004 | Pages 202-215
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT04-A3526
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The QUENCH bundle experiments together with pertinent separate-effects tests are run to investigate the hydrogen source term resulting from water injection into an uncovered core of a light water reactor for emergency cooling. The test bundle consists of 21 fuel rod simulators, 20 of which are heated electrically over a length of 1024 mm. The center rod is either an unheated fuel rod simulator or a control rod containing B4C absorber material. The Zircaloy-4 rod cladding and the grid spacers are identical to those used in pressurized water reactors, whereas the fuel is represented by ZrO2 pellets. After transient heating to 2000 K and above, cooling of the test bundle is accomplished by injecting water or steam into the bottom of the test section. Hydrogen generation during cooling was found either to stop almost immediately or to increase for a certain time. Increased hydrogen generation was found in those tests in which local melting occurred, probably as a result of oxidation of the melt containing zirconium. Hydrogen release in the flooding/cooling phase of all QUENCH experiments performed so far seems to be insensitive to the coolant (water or steam) under similar test conditions.
