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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.
H. Kakiuchi et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 4 | November 2011 | Pages 1256-1259
Environmental and Organically Bound Tritium | Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12658
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We developed an analytical method for organically bound 3H (OBT) in biological environmental samples by using noble gas mass spectrometry of 3He produced from 3H. Three environmental samples with background level OBT concentrations were analyzed, and the results agreed well with those by the conventional liquid scintillation counting of electrolyzed combustion water of the samples. This showed that the method is practical and effective.We also developed an analytical method for non-exchangeable OBT as a combination of pre-treatment of dried samples with free water 3H and our newly developed analytical method for OBT. The repeated analysis of a grass sample with moderate 3H concentration had smaller variance of results for non-exchangeable OBT than for OBT. The sum of non-exchangeable and exchangeable OBT agreed well with OBT measured in the samples. The developed method was successfully applied to terrestrial and marine environmental samples with background 3H levels.
