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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
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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.
W. M. Stacey, V. L. Beavers, W. A. Casino, J. R. Cheatham, Z. W. Friis, R. D. Green, W. R. Hamilton, K. W. Haufler, J. D. Hutchinson, W. J. Lackey, R. A. Lorio, J. W. Maddox, J. Mandrekas, A. A. Manzoor, C. A. Noelke, C. de Oliveira, M. Park, D. W. Tedder, M. R. Terry, E. A. Hoffman
Nuclear Technology | Volume 150 | Number 2 | May 2005 | Pages 162-188
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management and Disposal | doi.org/10.13182/NT05-A3614
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A design is presented for a subcritical, He-cooled fast reactor, driven by a tokamak D-T fusion neutron source, for the transmutation of spent nuclear fuel (SNF). The reactor is fueled with coated transuranic (TRU) particles and is intended for the deep-burn (>90%) transmutation of the TRUs in SNF without reprocessing of the coated fuel particles. The reactor design is based on the materials, fuel, and separations technologies under near-term development in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Nuclear Energy Program and on the plasma physics and fusion technologies under near-term development in the DOE Fusion Energy Sciences Program, with the objective of intermediate-term (~2040) deployment. The physical and performance characteristics and research and development requirements of such a reactor are described.