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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.
Wael Hilali, Michael Buck, Joerg Starflinger (Univ of Stuttgart)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 215-222
In a hypothetical severe accident in light water reactors, a deep pool of water is employed in the lower drywell of the containment, to cool the core melt materials discharged from the reactor pressure vessel. By contact with water, the molten corium will fragment, solidify and settle at the bottom as a porous debris bed. The preeminent goal becomes how to prevent the re-melting of the debris in consequence of insufficient cooling. One of the main factors affecting the ability of decay heat removal is the geometrical configuration of the bed, which can also change due to the particles redistribution induced by steam production within the bed. In this work, the influence of steam production on bed formation was investigated experimentally with the dedicated BeForE-facility. A series of experiments were conducted by discharging solid particles in in two-dimensional viewing vessel, while air bubbles simulating the steam production are injected simultaneously from the bottom. Depending on the quantity of the settled particles on the top of each section of the vessel, air flow rate is so monitored and adjusted in time to simulate the corresponding amount of steam produced by the similar quantity of debris. Based on the obtained experimental results, a numerical model is established to simulate the two-dimensional debris bed formation under the influence of steam production.