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The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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.
Fateme Fahiman, Mahdi Kafaee, Ali Moussavi-Zarandi, and Meisam Fahiman
Nuclear Technology | Volume 187 | Number 1 | July 2014 | Pages 69-81
Technical Paper | Radiation Transport and Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-65
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this work, a board based on a Spartan-3 field-programmable gate array was designed as a hardware prototyping platform for development of a multichannel digital gamma spectrometer. The device is compatible with various detectors like high-purity germanium, NaI, and CsI detectors. Before implementing the hardware, the method for digital signal processing for gamma spectroscopy was developed. The aim of this paper is to introduce a robust tool suitable for optimizing the design of complicated systems. The characteristics of this method, such as its ability to implement adaptive shaping, are investigated. The optimum conditions for digital filtering were determined using MATLAB/Simulink. This scheme can be useful for commercial production. Simulation was used to examine each processing unit in the whole signal processing procedure including cusplike shaping. The proposed method can be used as a computer design tool for optimizing digital multichannel analyzers or digital nuclear spectrometers.