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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.
Hyun Sik Park, Ki Yong Choi, Seok Cho, Kyoung Ho Kang, Nam Hyun Choi, Dong Jin Euh, Yeon Sik Kim, Won Pil Baek
Nuclear Technology | Volume 170 | Number 1 | April 2010 | Pages 100-113
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the 2008 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants / Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT10-A9449
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A thermal-hydraulic integral effect test facility, Advanced Thermal-Hydraulic Test Loop for Accident Simulation (ATLAS), has been constructed at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute. It is a 1/2-reduced-height and 1/288-volume-scaled test facility based on the design features of APR1400, an evolutionary pressurized water reactor developed by the Korean industry. ATLAS was used to perform a set of integral effect tests on the reflood period of a large-break loss-of-coolant accident (LBLOCA) after intensive performance tests had been conducted to verify ATLAS's operational performance and controllability for major thermal-hydraulic components. The present LB-CL-09 test is one of the integral effect reflood tests for investigating the thermal-hydraulic characteristics during an entire reflood period that can be used to provide reliable data to help validate the LBLOCA analysis methodology for APR1400. The main objective of the present test is to identify the major thermal-hydraulic characteristics such as the direct emergency core coolant (ECC) bypass, downcomer boiling, and core cooling behavior during the reflood phase of an LBLOCA for APR1400 under conditions where the downcomer region interacts with the reactor core region and the heat could be transferred through the steam generator. The initial and boundary conditions were obtained by applying scaling ratios to the MARS simulation results. The decay heat and the ECC flow rate from the safety injection tank were simulated from the start of the reflood period. The ECC flow rate from the safety injection pump was 0.32 kg/s. The system pressure was fixed at [approximately]0.1 MPa, and the initial outer-wall temperature was determined to be 205°C. The experimental results showed the typical thermal-hydraulic trends expected to occur during the reflood phase of the LBLOCA scenario.