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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.
Y. F. Li, M. Kondo, T. Nagasaka, T. Muroga, V. Tsisar
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 1 | July 2011 | Pages 359-363
Materials Development & Plasma-Material Interactions | Proceedings of the Nineteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE) (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12380
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this work, corrosion experiments on 9Cr-ODS and CLAM steels were carried out in static Pb-Li at 873 K for 250 h. Both steels showed weight loss and softening near the surface after the exposure. Tensile properties did not change and creep properties degraded slightly for 9Cr-ODS steel. In contrast, CLAM steel showed hardening by increase in tensile strength and creep rupture time, and decrease in minimum creep rate and reduction of area. The metallurgical analyses showed that the both steels were non-uniformly corroded by preferential corrosion at grain and sub-grain boundaries. Near the surface, carbides were lost and Cr was depleted to several tens of m depth. The depletion was heavier for 9Cr-ODS than for CLAM. The corrosion mechanism was proposed to be a loss of protective oxide layer followed by dissolution of Cr in matrix into liquid Pb-Li. The more pronounced corrosion effect on 9Cr-ODS than on CLAM may be due to finer grain and sub-grain size enhancing preferential attack by Pb-Li at the boundaries, or lack of Mn in 9Cr-ODS, which can form protective layers for CLAM.
