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The mission of the Decommissioning and Environmental Sciences (DES) Division is to promote the development and use of those skills and technologies associated with the use of nuclear energy and the optimal management and stewardship of the environment, sustainable development, decommissioning, remediation, reutilization, and long-term surveillance and maintenance of nuclear-related installations, and sites. The target audience for this effort is the membership of the Division, the Society, and the public at large.
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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.
Andrew Greenop, Jae Keun Choi, Bryant Phan, Per F. Peterson (Univ of California, Berkeley)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 825-834
Coiled-Tube Gas Heaters (CTGHs) are shell-and-tube heat exchangers that incorporate small coiled tubes with a gas (supercritical CO2 or air) flowing radially through the tube bundle cooling the liquid inside the tubes. This design reduces the overall volume of the tube bundle while maximizing the heat transfer surface area, improves the effectiveness of the heater, and allows for large pressure differentials between the two heat transfer fluids. CTGHs are optimal for use as the primary heat exchanger in small modular reactors, such as SFRs and FHRs. In a previous paper, a design and optimization code, called THEEM, was developed to model CTGHs using non-dimensional heat transfer and fluid data. In order to experimentally validate this code, the Coiled-tube Air-heater Separate Effects Test (CASET) experiment was built. CASET consists of a single CTGH sub-bundle in an acrylic vessel that uses room temperature air to cool hot water in the bundle. The initial validation experiments indicate that THEEM can accurately predict the temperatures and heat exchanger effectiveness, but the pressure drop calculations may need to be reevaluated. CASET was also used to measure the distribution of the air flowing through the bundle, which could then be used to improve THEEM in the future. Finally, the Wilson plot method was used to develop heat transfer convection correlations for both the shell-side and tube-side fluids, which could have applications to other coiled tube heat exchangers.