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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
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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.
Helen Winberg-Wang, Ivars Neretnieks, Mikko Voutilainen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 7 | July 2019 | Pages 964-977
Regular Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1573620
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Uranine is a dye commonly used in tracer experiments; it is chosen for its high visibility even at low concentrations. Uranine solutions are slightly denser than water at the same temperature. However, in laboratory experiments uranine solutions have been known to occasionally show unpredictable flow behaviors. This paper investigates the possible effect of light-induced density change to explain some of these behaviors. Uranine has a wide light absorption spectrum for visible light, which can heat the dye solution and lower its density to below that of the surrounding water, which induces buoyancy-driven flow. Simulations are made in both one dimension and two dimensions to determine the extent of the effect. The results are then compared to different experiments with unanticipated flow patterns.