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Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy
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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.
Nicholas Chornoboy, Alexandra Levinsky, Charles Kitson, Blair P. Bromley
Nuclear Technology | Volume 204 | Number 1 | October 2018 | Pages 110-118
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1454229
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Lattice physics depletion calculations were performed to obtain postburnup fuel compositions for several candidate advanced heavy water reactor fuels. These fuel compositions were used as input for a deep geological repository (DGR) modeling tool for hydrogeology simulations to simulate the transport of radionuclides to the surface, to find the radionuclides that reach the surface path through the biosphere, and to estimate the hypothetical dose rate to humans located above the DGR.
Three primary factors were found to contribute to surface dose rate: burnup, composition of the primary waste matrix, and percentage of thorium in the fuel. Higher burnup and thorium percentage contribute to increased surface dose rates through increased 129I production, while a primarily uranium waste matrix increases surface dose rate through faster dissolution leading to increased radionuclide release rate from the fuel. For all the hypothetical fuels investigated, the estimated dose rates are well within the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s hypothetical DGR’s acceptance criterion of 0.3 mSv/year.
