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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.
Shinsuke Tashiro, Gunzo Uchiyama, Takuya Ohno, Yuki Amano, Ryoichiro Yoshida, Hithoshi Abe
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 7 | July 2022 | Pages 1205-1213
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.2018272
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A clogging behavior of a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter has been investigated for solvent fire accidents to provide valuable data for establishing a risk assessment method for reprocessing facilities in Japan. In this study, the burning rates of 30% tri-butyl phosphate (TBP)/dodecane and dodecane solvents and the differential pressure ΔP change of a high airflow–type HEPA filter applied in ventilation systems of reprocessing facilities in Japan were measured in the solvent burning. It was confirmed that the dodecane in the 30% TBP/dodecane mixed solvent burned mainly at the early stage of the burning of the mixed solvent and that the TBP burned mainly at the late stage of the burning of the mixed solvent. In addition, the burning rate of dodecane in the early stage and the rate of the TBP in the late stage were estimated, respectively. As a result, the former rate was almost the same as the burning rate of burning only the dodecane without TBP. Furthermore, the rapid increase of the ΔP of the HEPA filter was observed at the late stage of burning the mixed solvent. The increase of the release ratio of the airborne particles of unburned solvent (i.e., TBP and/or degradation products of TBP) and inorganic phosphorus (i.e., P2O5) was considered to contribute to the rapid increase. The empirical formulas for representing the relationship between the mass of the loading airborne particles onto the HEPA filter and the ΔP of the HEPA filter, except for the region of the rapid increase of the ΔP, under the mixed-solvent burning could be induced.
