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ANS Student Conference 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.
Luis E. Herranz, Claudia López (CIEMAT)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 318-324
Worldwide there has been an enormous interest to fully understand the Fukushima accident unfolding, as a way to gain key insights for prevention of these accidents and mitigation of their consequences. This paper focuses on the CIEMAT’s forensic analysis of the Fukushima Unit 1 (1F1) accident sequence. By identifying the major challenges faced for a consistent interpretation of the data available, a description of the MELCOR 2.2 model built to capture the main accident signatures is presented, with particular emphasis on fission product release and transport. Even though this study should be seen as a work in progress, the results here presented are based on a defendable set of hypotheses and approximations and highlight some interesting observations that might have affected fission product release and transport. Among them are worth mentioning the deposit remobilization during the transient (Cesium), the moderate retention in the suppression pool due to the WW bypass meant by direct leaks between RPV and DW and the potential reentrainment as a result of pool saturation. This being said, it’ll be hard to confirm any of these insights concerning fission products. This work is framed under the BSAF Phase 2 project of the OECD and it has been supported by the Spanish Nuclear Regulatory Body through the CSN-CIEMAT collaboration agreement on Severe Accidents (ACAS).