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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.
Aku Itälä, Mika Laitinen, Merja Tanhua-Tyrkkö, Markus Olin
Nuclear Technology | Volume 187 | Number 2 | August 2014 | Pages 169-174
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management and Disposal | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-79
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The bentonite barrier is an essential part of a safe spent fuel repository in granitic bedrock. One of the most important safety functions of bentonite buffer is to limit groundwater flow so that all mass transport takes place by diffusion. In this work a new mathematical model was developed to define the transport of ions inside the bentonite, where there are bound interlayer water and free extra layer water and sorption capability. This model is tested in a specified geometry and calculated by two numerical platforms—Numerrin and COMSOL Multiphysics—and compared to the original TOUGHREACT model. The model comparison was not a straightforward task because of different approaches in the model setup. Therefore, all the equations are written down, and parameterization is done to create model descriptions near each other. The developed model adapts easily, and there are many new ideas to be tested in bridging the gap between performance assessment and real systems.