- Hot cells are strongly enclosed facilities where scientists can safely experiment on nuclear fuels.
- Ongoing research at hot cell facilities has helped scientists make smaller, safer nuclear reactors.
- The HFEF facility tests materials in multiple ways, including by destroying them for analysis.
The Department of Energy (DoE) has shared a video exploring the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF) at Idaho National Laboratory, where scientists and technicians can safely study nuclear fuel sources from behind 4-foot-thick glass.
A hot cell is any enclosure like this where scientists can study nuclear materials without exposure to radiation. If Marie and Pierre Curie had had access to a hot cell, their stories could have ended very differently. In the opening sequence of The Simpsons, Homer handles nuclear material from inside a hazmat suit, which makes sense, since nuclear power plants have small amounts of fuel that are kept in enclosed reactors.
Many of the nation’s nuclear research facilities rely on much safer hot cells for ongoing work that involves studying nuclear fuels and conducting experiments, not just installing fuels in reactors and monitoring them afterward. In fact, hot cells are where researchers can safely model accidents at power plants and test protocols to contain them. The HFEF at Idaho National Laboratory has an array of instruments to measure nuclear fuels, scan materials using gamma rays, simulate accidents for training and preparation, and stress test materials.
About 4,000 people work at the entire Idaho National Laboratory, of which HFEF is just one small part. The scientist who supervises the instruments in HFEF, Kathryn Wheeler, is a nuclear engineer who coauthored a paper with HFEF colleagues last year. Within the main “hot cell” (there are two at the facility, but the second is used for decontaminating equipment and materials), the DoE’s video says scientists use “remote manipulators” to “safely deconstruct and analyze” radioactive materials.
To study how nuclear fuels work and what’s going in inside of them chemically, scientists can use destructive and non-destructive tests. Carbon dating, where scientists study the carbon isotopes in a material then compare it to the long timeline of historical carbon isotopes in the atmosphere, is a destructive process. Some amount of a sample must be destroyed for the chemical contents to be analyzed. All kinds of materials, not just nuclear, are tested in many ways that are destructive.
For nuclear materials, how they decompose and what happens if they’re destroyed is critically important to understanding their overall safety as fuels. Even to turn a fuel source into the shape and size needed for a particular reactor means it must be machined safely, which the HFEF also does. HFEF's powerful safety equipment and procedures make it a destination for regional research, and ensure the Radium Girls experience hopefully stays in the past.