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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.
Kosuke Aizawa, Koei Sasaki, Yoshitaka Chikazawa, Masaru Fukuie, Noboru Jinbo
Nuclear Technology | Volume 204 | Number 1 | October 2018 | Pages 74-82
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1469346
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Development of an inspection technique in opaque liquid-metal coolant is one of the important issues to ensure the safety of the liquid-metal fast breeder reactor (LMFBR). Performance tests of an under sodium viewer (USV), which was developed to detect an obstacle in the reactor vessel (RV) of the LMFBR Monju, have been carried out. Ultrasonic sensors and reflectors are located across the core inside Monju’s RV. The USV can detect an obstacle existing between the core top and the upper core structure bottom by identifying differences of echo signals. This paper describes the USV performance tests. In the tests, the reference echo signals under various conditions were accumulated, and the signal-to-noise ratio successfully exceeded the target value. Measured signals clearly differed with and without an obstacle. These experimental results show the performance of the USV for detecting an obstacle in a specified place.