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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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.
J. Papin, B. Cazalis, J. M. Frizonnet, J. Desquines, F. Lemoine, V. Georgenthum, F. Lamare, M. Petit
Nuclear Technology | Volume 157 | Number 3 | March 2007 | Pages 230-250
Technical Paper | Reactivity-Initiated Accident (RIA) | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-A3815
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The CABRI REP-Na program was performed in the sodium loop of the CABRI reactor by the French Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire. The objective was to study the behavior of high-burnup UO2 and mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel during a reactivity-initiated accident (RIA) and involved eight tests with UO2 and four with MOX fuel. Failures of some UO2 and MOX fuel rods at enthalpy levels ranging from 125 to 472 J/g (30 to 113 cal/g) demonstrated the need for further development of the present safety criteria pertaining to fuel behavior. Detailed interpretation of the test data led to identifying the deleterious influence of a high clad corrosion level with hydride concentrations on clad failure, the contribution of grain boundary gases on fission gas release, and potential clad loading, mainly in MOX fuel during the first phase of the transient without significant clad temperature increase.Questions still remain concerning the transient fission gas behavior and its impact on clad loading during the entire transient, the rod behavior with high clad temperature and internal pressure, and the postfailure phenomena (fuel ejection, fuel/coolant interaction with finely fragmented solid fuel). These issues will be addressed by the CABRI International Program tests under typical pressurized water reactor conditions.
