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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.
Michael Epstein, Hans K. Fauske, Charles F. Askonas, Marc A. Vial, Patricia Paviet-Hartmann
Nuclear Technology | Volume 163 | Number 2 | August 2008 | Pages 294-306
Technical Paper | Reprocessing | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A3989
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Adiabatic calorimetry testing was performed to determine the Arrhenius relations for the chemical self-heat rates generated by the oxidation of tri-n-butyl phosphate saturated with nitric acid ("organic phase"). The adiabatic calorimetry tests showed that the runaway reaction is tempered at ~109°C when the organic phase rests on top of a layer of aqueous nitric acid ("aqueous phase"). It is believed that tempering in the laboratory-scale two-layer organic/aqueous system is mainly due to the upward transport of dissolved water from the aqueous phase to the organic phase where the water evaporates into rising reaction product gas bubbles. The rate of water transport depends strongly on the location and rate of product gas bubble generation. Isothermal tests were performed that clearly reveal that the reaction product gas bubbles originate in the underlying aqueous layer and that their rate of generation is bubbling enhanced reactant mass transfer controlled. A semiempirical expression for the rate of gas generation was developed from the measurements and from available correlations on enhanced mass transfer in bubbling pools. The empirical and semiempirical relations reported here for chemical self-heat rates and reaction product gas production are necessary to determine the thermal stability boundaries of single-layer and two-layer systems, predictions of which appear in the companion paper, "Thermal Stability and Safe Venting of the Tri-N-Butyl Phosphate-Nitric Acid-Water ("Red Oil") System - III: Predictions of Thermal Stability Boundaries and Required Vent Size," Nuclear Technology, Vol. 163, p. 307 (2008).