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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.
Kenzo Munakata, Yoshinori Kawamura
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 1 | July 2011 | Pages 426-430
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-A12394
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Cryogenic adsorption is effective for the separative recovery of hydrogen isotopes of small concentrations from the bulk helium gas. Thus, the cryogenic adsorption method is considered to be applied to the recovery of tritium from the blanket sweep gas which recovers tritium from ceramic breeder materials, the cleanup system of the helium discharge exhaust gas of the fusion reactor and so forth. The authors performed a screening test to find more suitable adsorbents for the recovery of hydrogen isotopes from the bulk helium gas at liquid nitrogen temperature. The authors tested various adsorbents, and the screening test indicates that a natural mordenite adsorbent has a quite high adsorption capacity for hydrogen under the helium atmosphere. For the adsorption of deuterium, it was found that the natural mordenite adsorbent have a high adsorption capacity even at lower pressure range of deuterium. The adsorption rate of hydrogen isotopes was quantified by analyzing breakthrough curves obtained in the experiments. Evaluated effective pore diffusivities of hydrogen isotopes in the mordenite adsorbents are comparable to that in MS5A adsorbents. Thus, it can be said that mordenite adsorbents are also suitable for adsorption of hydrogen isotopes from the viewpoint of adsorption rates. The results mentioned above suggest that the mordenite-type of adsorbents is promising for the recovery of low-concentration hydrogen isotopes from the helium bulk gas.
