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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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.
Masato Uchita, Takayuki Miyagawa, Koji Dozaki (JAPC), Yoshitaka Chikazawa, Shigenobu Kubo, Hiroki Hayafune (JAEA), Tetsuji Suzuno, Tsuyoshi Fukasawa, Yoshio Kamishima (Mitsubishi FBR Systems, Inc.), Satoshi Fujita (Tokyo Denki Univ)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 380-386
The pool-type reactor encloses primary pumps and IHXs located around the core barrel in a reactor vessel. Consequently, the reactor vessel diameter tends to be larger than that of loop-type reactor. From the viewpoint of commercialization in the future, the vessel diameter and its weight including sodium coolant will increase further. Moreover, the seismic loading conditions imposed on design works of the SFR concept are very severe for large vessel. For the heavy weight large vessel under severe seismic conditions, the buckling evaluation on the cylindrical part of the vessel is significant for a feasibility study. In this paper, the prospects are described in terms of seismic design to prevent buckling of the reactor vessel based on parameter studies with diameters of the vessel. In addition, the seismic isolation device which will be effective as a countermeasure is proposed in order to secure a margin against buckling of a large reactor vessel.