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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.
G. R. Ansarifar, M. H. Esteki, M. Zaidabadi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 195 | Number 1 | July 2016 | Pages 105-109
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NT15-90
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Dual-cooled annular nuclear fuel, which is an internally and externally cooled annular fuel, has many advantages for heat transfer. One of the most prominent of these advantages is the ability to harvest more of this type of fuel, which can increase the thermal power of nuclear plants. In this technical note, the core of a VVER-1000 reactor is designed based on the use of internally and externally cooled annular fuels. The thermal-hydraulic parameters of the fuel rods in this type of reactor are analyzed. In addition, the uprate of the thermal power in a VVER-1000 reactor using annular fuels is investigated. For this purpose, first, the proper pitch length of fuel rods in the core is designed under clean and cold conditions using cell and core neutronics calculation codes. Then, thermal-hydraulic calculations are performed for a simulated fuel rod in a hot channel using computational fluid dynamics simulation codes. These calculations are compared with a conventional VVER-1000 reactor that does not use this kind of fuel. One of the most important results of the analysis is that annular fuel shows a sufficient margin for the departure from nucleate boiling and fuel pellet temperature relative to cylindrical fuel. The margin seems viable in accommodating a 129% power uprate.
