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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.
Jung Hwan Kim, Chul Min Kim, Yong Hee Lee, Man-Sung Yim
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 11 | November 2021 | Pages 1753-1767
Regular Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1837583
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The safe operation of a nuclear power plant (NPP) can be guaranteed through the team effort of operators in the main control room (MCR). Among the various features, peer checks, concurrent verification, independent verification, and communication reconfirmation are major contributors to effective operations in the MCR. In the digital MCR environment of advanced NPPs, there are potential emerging issues of concern related to these contributors resulting from the use of PC-soft controls for reactor operations. The objective of this study is to investigate the development of quantitative indicators for estimating the implicit intentions of reactor operators as a way to mitigate such concerns. The proposed quantitative indicators support peer checks and concurrent/independent verifications for diagnosing and preventing human errors through communication enhancement in a digital technology-based MCR. A machine learning–based algorithm was used to classify two implicit intentions of agreement and disagreement. The classification was based on electroencephalography data measured from human subjects while they performed mock operational tasks using soft controls. The mock operational tasks were based on using a Windows-based nuclear plant performance analyzer (Win-NPA). Statistical analysis was performed on the measured data to identify significant differences between the agreement and disagreement judgments by the operators. An average classification accuracy of 72% was achieved by using a support vector machine classifier for the Win-NPA task with a low number of features across the various Brodmann areas. The methodology proposed in this study may also serve to enhance communications in conventional MCRs for human error minimization.