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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.
B. Boer, A. M. Ougouag, J. L. Kloosterman, G. K. Miller
Nuclear Technology | Volume 162 | Number 3 | June 2008 | Pages 276-292
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A3956
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The PArticle STress Analysis (PASTA) code was written to evaluate stresses in coated particle fuel embedded in graphite of high-temperature reactors (HTRs). Existing models for predicting stresses in coated particle fuels were extended with a treatment of stresses induced by dimensional change of the matrix graphite and stresses caused by neighboring particles.PASTA was applied to two practical cases in order to evaluate the significance of this model extension. Thermal hydraulics, neutronics, and fuel depletion calculation tools were used to calculate the fuel conditions in these cases. Stresses in the first fuel loading of the High-Temperature Engineering Test Reactor (HTTR) and in the fuel of a 400-MW(thermal) pebble bed reactor were analyzed.It is found that the presence of the matrix material plays a significant role in the determination of the stresses that apply to a single isolated TRISO particle as well as in the transmittal of the stresses between particles in actual pebble designs.