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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.
Axel Hoefer, Oliver Buss, Michael Schmid
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 12 | December 2019 | Pages 1578-1587
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1560784
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A general Bayesian framework for best-estimate plus uncertainty predictions of multidimensional continuous observables is presented. Parameterizing uncertainties in terms of multivariate normal distribution models, this Multivariate normal Bayesian model (MNBM) framework allows one to include both measured data and linear constraints in a mathematically consistent way. The resulting updating formulas are generalizations of the updating formulas of the Generalized Linear Least Squares (GLLS) framework, which is widely used for the generation of adjusted nuclear data libraries. While the GLLS methodology is restricted to first-order perturbation theory, there is no such restriction for the considered MNBM framework. This makes it possible to use Monte Carlo uncertainty propagation and to apply the updating formulas directly to the observables of interest without having to first update the input parameter distributions. After a general presentation of the MNBM framework and a brief discussion of its possible applications, the generation of bounding burnup-dependent axial burnup profiles of light water reactor fuel assemblies for the purpose of criticality safety analysis is discussed as an example application.