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Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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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.
Bei Ye, Jeff Rest, Yeon Soo Kim, Gerard Hofman, Benoit Dionne
Nuclear Technology | Volume 191 | Number 1 | July 2015 | Pages 27-40
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT14-56
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
DART (Dispersion Analysis Research Tool) is a computational code developed for integrated simulation of the irradiation behavior of aluminum dispersion fuels used in research reactors. The DART computational code uses a mechanistic fission gas behavior model and a set of up-to-date empirical correlations to simulate the fuel morphology change as a function of burnup. Integrating a thermal calculation subroutine enables fuel material properties to be updated at each time step. This paper describes the primary physical models that form the basis of the DART computational code. A baseline validation was performed through the modeling of several U-Mo/Al mini-plate tests (RERTR-6, 7, and 9) in the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR). A demonstration problem is also presented through the calculation of fuel plate swelling and constituent volume fractions in full-sized plates from the AFIP-1 test in ATR.
