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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.
Michael F. Dowling, Jason D. Wartell, Sheldon M. Jeter, Said I. Abdel-Khalik
Nuclear Technology | Volume 117 | Number 3 | March 1997 | Pages 353-365
Technical Paper | Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT97-A35349
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A capacitance-type sensor whose sensitivity is sufficiently high to detect liquid water droplets in a stream of gas with very low moisture content is described. Instantaneous capacitance is measured for a probe consisting of two closely spaced parallel plates through which a two-phase mixture is flowing; the presence of liquid within the sensor’s active volume generates a measurable capacitance increase due to the much higher dielectric constant of liquid water compared with gas or steam. Proof-of-concept experiments were carried out to determine the relative effects of droplet size, velocity, and position on the output of the sensor. The probe detected individual water droplets in the range of 7.5 to 20.0 μl and had a voltage output that was linear with droplet volume in this range. In addition, the signal pulse width was found to be a sensitive indicator of droplet velocity. The data indicate that the probe can be used to measure the moisture fraction of a high-quality gas flow in the range from 0 < β <0.013 (liquid volume/total volume) with a maximum standard deviation of ∼0.001.