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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.
A. Serikov, U. Fischer, L. Mercatali, P. Baeten, G. Vittiglio
Nuclear Technology | Volume 168 | Number 3 | December 2009 | Pages 877-887
Shielding | Special Issue on the 11th International Conference on Radiation Shielding and the 15th Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division (PART 3) / Radiation Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A9322
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The VENUS-F facility of the GUINEVERE project must satisfy the nuclear safety criteria required by the licensing regulations of the Belgian authority. For this reason, radiation shielding analyses were performed at Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (FZK) in the course of nuclear safety assessments in support of the GUINEVERE project. The Monte Carlo (MC) MCNP5 model was developed in accordance with the current design of the VENUS-F fast lead reactor. The reactor was assumed to operate on 500-W fission power, which is called zero power, with accelerator-driven system (ADS)-related experimental aims. The MC variance reduction techniques, such as particle splitting, Russian roulette, weight windows, and point detectors, were applied. To speed up the MCNP calculations, the advantages of message-passing interface parallel computations on FZK's CampusGrid Linux Cluster were employed. The MCNP track-length estimations, point detectors, and the mesh tally superimposed over the GUINVERE geometry were used in dose rate calculations. The neutron and photon maps of dose equivalent rate were produced in places of possible personnel access inside the reactor control room and on the accelerator room's floor. To obtain the dose equivalent, the neutron and photon fluences were converted by means of ICRP-77 and ANSI/ANS-6.1.1-1977 conversion factors, respectively. The contributions of the D-D and D-T fusion neutron sources to the dose rate fields were estimated. Activation analyses of the lead core and building materials were performed by the FISPACT-2005 inventory code with the EAF-2005 library to manage the radioactive materials after the series of ADS experiments in the GUINEVERE project. The activity density and shutdown contact dose rate have been calculated. The effect of the impurities in lead on its radioactivity after the VENUS-F campaign was examined.