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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.
A. Patra, S. Saha Ray
Nuclear Technology | Volume 189 | Number 1 | January 2015 | Pages 103-109
Technical Note | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-148
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This technical note introduces a numerical procedure that is efficient for calculating the solution for the fractional order nonlinear neutron point-kinetics equation in nuclear reactor dynamics. The explicit finite difference method (EFDM) is applied to solve the fractional order nonlinear neutron point-kinetics equation with Newtonian temperature feedback reactivity. This nonlinear neutron point-kinetics model has been analyzed in the presence of temperature feedback reactivity. The numerical solution obtained by EFDM is an approximate solution that is based on neutron density, precursor concentrations of multigroup delayed neutrons, and the reactivity function. The method is investigated using experimental data, with given initial conditions along with Newtonian temperature feedback reactivity. From the computational results, it can be shown that this numerical approximation method is straightforward and effective for solving fractional order nonlinear neutron point-kinetics equations. Numerical results citing the behavior of neutron density for different types of fractional order are presented graphically.
