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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.
Wang-Kee In, Tae-Hyun Chun, Chang-Hwan Shin, Dong-Seok Oh
Nuclear Technology | Volume 161 | Number 1 | January 2008 | Pages 69-79
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A3914
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A series of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations has been conducted to analyze the heat transfer enhancement in a fully heated rod bundle with mixing-vane spacers. The predicted Nusselt numbers downstream of the split-vane spacer are compared with the available experimental measurements and with correlation. The CFD calculations at Re = 28000 and 42000 showed a lower heat transfer enhancement close to the space grid but a good agreement of the decay rate with the fully heated experimental data at ~6Dh downstream of the grid. The CFD simulations also showed a maximum enhancement of the heat transfer at 6 to 7Dh downstream of the split-vane spacer due to the multiple vortices predicted near the spacer. In addition, the present paper compares the thermal-hydraulic performance of two different mixing vane spacers, i.e., a split-vane spacer and a hybrid-vane spacer, based on CFD simulations at a pressurized water reactor's operating conditions. The split vane is predicted to have a higher overall heat transfer enhancement but a lower local heat transfer far downstream of the spacer where the minimum departure from nucleate boiling ratio is anticipated.