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The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
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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.
Athena A. Sagadevan, Sunil S. Chirayath
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 10 | October 2022 | Pages 1511-1521
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2057775
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
It has become a common practice to store sufficiently cooled spent nuclear fuel (SNF) assemblies in interim storage dry casks with passive cooling. These dry casks require nuclear safeguards monitoring because they contain plutonium. Past studies on dry cask modeling and simulations have shown that a remote monitoring system (RMS) situated inside the dry cask could continually monitor and detect the removal of even a single SNF assembly from the cask. This conceptual RMS design was tested by conducting laboratory-scale experiments using small-size 252Cf neutron sources. These small-size sources were surrounded by neutron-reflecting materials in the experiments to mimic the SNF assemblies as a surface neutron source to the fission chamber detectors of the RMS. Experimental and simulation results showed that the removal or diversion of even a single neutron source is detectable within 4 min with a probability of detection greater than 80%.
