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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.
Justin Mart, Andrew Klein, Alexey Soldatov
Nuclear Technology | Volume 188 | Number 1 | October 2014 | Pages 8-19
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-135
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The elimination of soluble boron in the operation of small modular integral pressurized water reactors creates several advantages. Most of these advantages are realized by the core simplification brought on by removing the corrosive effects of soluble boron. Piping, pumps, and tanks associated with soluble boron can be completely eliminated, bringing a significant economic and safety benefit. Additionally, a whole class of accidents related to boron dilution would be eliminated by design, and any loss-of-coolant event would not be affected by the presence of soluble boron. However, removing soluble boron creates its own set of specific challenges that must be overcome. In traditional pressurized water reactors, soluble boron is used in conjunction with burnable poisons to suppress excess initial reactivity. Since boron is diluted in the coolant, its presence is felt uniformly throughout the core, and thus it uniformly reduces the excess initial reactivity. In any boron-free design, an acceptable alternative to boron must be found through the use of the other two mechanisms for reactivity control: burnable poisons and control rods. However, both methods pose challenges. Control rods are actively controlled but are discrete absorbers, locally impacting the core where they are inserted. Since they are inserted from the top of the core, their presence negatively impacts the axial neutron flux profile. This axial flux imbalance creates undesirable peaking factors, leading to reduced operating margins. Thus, the main challenge in any boron-free design concerns excess reactivity suppression and active reactivity control while maintaining a proper axial flux profile and reduced peaking factors. This paper demonstrates that an advanced control rod algorithm with multiple control rod banks can be used for this purpose to satisfy the criteria for success.