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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
Meeting Spotlight
ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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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.
Jean-François Vivier, Guilaume Jacquart (EdF), Olli Kymäläinen (FORTUM), Giovanni Ferraro (EDF)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 918-924
Since 1991, the European Utility Requirements (EUR) Organisation has been actively developing and promoting harmonised technical specifications for the new mid- and large-size LWR designs to be proposed by the vendors in Europe.
It is a unique document aiming at harmonising technical specifications of LWR among European Utilities members of the EUR Organisation.
The EUR Document consists of a comprehensive set of requirements covering the whole nuclear power plant: nuclear island and conventional island. It encompasses all aspects (safety, performance, competitiveness) and all parts of a NPP (nuclear island and conventional island). The document can be used by the Utilities (guide for design assessment, technical reference for call for bids) and by the Vendors, as a technical guide. The harmonisation which is sought after by the EUR aims at delivering the safest and most competitive designs based on common rules shared all over Europe. Fourteen nuclear operators across Europe are members of the Organisation.
For and after the publication of the Revision E of the EUR Document (December 2016), the EUR organisation has been extremely active. The presentation describes the main results obtained during the last 3 years and the new challenges for the coming three years (roadmap 2016- 2018) in the three following fields.
First, the revision of the EUR Document, in order to maintain it at a state-of-the-art level, is the main recent achievement of the Organisation. The revision E of the EUR document has been issued in December 2016. The presentation describes the most significant updates implemented in many fields among which: revised safety requirements taking into account the most recent European and international safety standards issued by WENRA and AIEA, the lessons learned from the Fukushima accident, including re-evaluated seismic and external natural hazards approach and the most recent international standards, for example for Instrumentation & Control.
The assessment of new designs is the second main technical activity of the EUR organisation. The KHNP EU-APR (European version of APR1400) design has been assessed against the revision D between 2015 and 2017. Another design assessment is in progress (namely Russian AEP’s VVER TOI) and is planned to be ended in 2018. A new applicant is in the file. The presentation briefly recalls the EUR design assessment objectives and process and the progress of the different assessment projects.
The third topic to be covered by the presentation is the interaction between the EUR and the other stakeholders, in particular the other international organisations (ENISS, WNA/CORDEL, WENRA, IAEA, EPRI/URD). The presentation describes how the EUR organisation is connected to these stakeholders and the corresponding cooperation results and future projects.
