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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.
Li Wang, Yang Liu, Fuyu Zhao
Nuclear Technology | Volume 186 | Number 1 | April 2014 | Pages 33-44
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-15
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents mathematical modeling of dynamic phenomena in large pressurized water reactors to study load-follow capability. One of the main reactor types in China's national nuclear development, CPR1000, uses a mode G control method, with G banks, N banks, R banks, and soluble boron to adjust reactor power changes and the axial power shape. In this paper, a new control mode is adopted that can follow the daily variation of power demand without changing the boron concentration. The control banks are regrouped to realize reactivity/temperature control by M banks and axial offset control by an AO bank. A two-node dynamic core model is constructed, taking into account the coupling coefficient and the mutual influence. The transient parameters are obtained by steady-state calculation of a single channel using the original design and operation parameters of CPR1000. Then, to adopt a control mode without soluble boron adjustment, the optimal control implementation is connected to the core simulation platform. Simulation results show that this optimal control policy can provide the capability for the CPR1000 to follow a daily load curve.
