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Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy
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ANS Student Conference 2025
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Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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.
Lambert H. Fick, Elia Merzari, Yassin A. Hassan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 3 | March 2022 | Pages 539-561
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.1930456
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We present results for a direct numerical simulation study of isothermal incompressible flow in a regularly packed pebble-bed domain with a bounding wall. We focus specifically on the near-wall behavior of the flow. Our simulation is carried out at a Reynolds number of 9308 to facilitate cross verification with available high-fidelity data. To reduce the required time to achieve statistically stationary results, we implemented an ensemble-averaging scheme that allowed for multiple simulation runs to be carried out concurrently. The close packing of the spheres in the domain causes significant acceleration effects in the domain, which result in boundary layer detachment and reattachment. Presented results include selected first- and second-order turbulence statistics, as well as selected terms of the turbulent kinetic energy transport equation. The acceleration effects in the near-wall region of the domain cause negative production of turbulent kinetic energy. The presented data may be useful for benchmarking Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes–based simulations of pebble beds.
