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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.
Sunil Kumar Jatav, Vijay Kumar Pandey, Parimal P. Kulkarni, Arun K. Nayak, Upender Pandel, Rajendra K. Duchaniya
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 11 | November 2022 | Pages 1756-1768
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2061291
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To mitigate severe accidents in nuclear reactors, the present research sheds light on the melt-coolability behavior of corium with hypothetical experiments that have been performed at two different nozzle diameters under bottom flooding conditions. In this research, a simulant material CaO-Fe2O3 powder mixture was melted and poured into the test section that was embedded in the test facility (using a bottom pouring furnace instead of a tiltable furnace). Then, from the bottom of the melt pool, water was flooded through a nozzle at a pressure of 0.70 bar and a water flow rate of 12 liters per minute. Because of the interaction between the water and melt, the melt quenched and converted into fine porous debris, and the temperature history was recorded using 12 K-type thermocouples connected to a data acquisition system. The average quenching time and porosity of the debris were affected by variations in the nozzle diameter. This research will help in understanding real core-melt accidents that generally occur in nuclear power plants.