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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.
Takahiro Arai, Masahiro Furuya, Kenetsu Shirakawa
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 2 | February 2022 | Pages 203-221
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.1897733
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A subchannel void sensor (SCVS) acquires the two-phase flow in a rod bundle as the time-series data of cross-sectional distributions. Herein, the temperature and pressure ranges of an SCVS were extended to include the rated conditions of boiling water reactors. The improved SCVSs were installed in a 5 × 5 heated rod bundle at eight height levels. In a boiling experiment using the rod bundle, the three-dimensional distributions of the boiling two-phase flow were measured over a wide pressure range (up to 7.2 MPa). The new experimental data were compared with existing experimental data and the results of a subchannel analysis. Experimental results were consistent with those of a high-energy X-ray computed tomography study of a heated rod bundle with the same geometry and under the same heat and flow conditions as those used in our study. The subchannel analysis code reproduced the experimental results fairly well, and the obtained database is applicable for validating and improving thermal-hydraulic analysis codes.
